


First Times: A Raistafina Fanfic

by eagereyes



Category: Gymnastics RPF
Genre: F/F, raistafina
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8780449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eagereyes/pseuds/eagereyes
Summary: The origins of Raistafina from the London 2012 Olympics, as told by Jenkenlee.





	1. Aly

**Author's Note:**

> I take no credit for the following work. All rights and ownership go to Jen; I am simply reposting this story here for safe-keeping. 
> 
> Enjoy. :)

The first time she sees Aliya Mustafina at the Olympic Village, Aly Raisman is standing at the main lobby through which all Olympic athletes have to check in. Her teammates have sat down beside the delegation from Brazil while Aly waits in line to request some extra keys before they head to their assigned rooms. While she speaks to an older woman behind the front desk, Aly turns to the area behind her, intending to point to where the rest of Team USA is, and that’s when her gaze is instantly pulled to the arriving Russian gymnastics team—to one girl in particular, deeply engaged in her phone while her teammates point and comment on their surroundings.

Aly, like the rest of her team, knows the Russian gymnasts. Not only because Russia and China are their toughest competition, but also because the more veteran international gymnasts, like Aly, Jordyn, Aliya Mustafina and Viktoria Komova, sort of grew up together; in the yearly competitions everyone got a chance to catch up on who’s grown up a couple of inches, who’s perfected that skill they struggled with last year, etc. So Aly knows who Mustafina is, and knew she was going to be here, and yet, for some reason she can’t figure out, her attention is completely monopolized by her. She has to blink back a flash of memory; a blur of sparkling purple leotard, flying impossibly high above every apparatus, and the one perfect landing at Worlds in 2010 that made Aly wish she spoke Russian, so she could congratulate the gymnast and have a chance to say, however breathlessly and dorkily, “you’re perfect—really, really perfect.” The scene, only a moment long, splashes inside her mind and is gone just as quickly.

Aly tries to watch Mustafina discreetly, and is relieved when the girl doesn’t notice, as she doesn’t seem to have anything on her mind besides helping the other girls with their bags. Mustafina was the queen of Worlds in 2010, while Aly herself only really matured into her gymnastics in the last year or so. Even now… yes, she’s the team captain and everything, but she’s not the one at the forefront in the media and in anyone’s winner predictions… Jordyn and Gabby are the stars here, and she’s kind of the steady backup. And even recovering from a horrible (and recent) injury, Mustafina still could win everything. It’s kind of daunting to think about that. Another look at the Russian girl reminds Aly that she’s also really, really pretty. Probably the prettiest gymnast in the world…

Aly clears her throat and turns to the hotel employee again, who now has the extra keys available and is wishing her luck in a crisp English accent. Reluctantly, Aly walks back to where her team is awaiting her; she’s almost too aware that Mustafina and the rest of Team Russia are standing only a few feet away now, and there’s a nervous tremor accompanying her heartbeats, anxious for when competition finally begins and she has to go up against the Russian juggernaut, and nervous for when Mustafina finally sees her (will she recognize her?). Aly is then immersed by her teammates’ conversations, momentarily forgetting all about Mustafina: apparently McKayla can’t find her phone charger, Jordyn thinks her shampoo exploded in her bag, and Gabby is having a hard time fitting all her luggage inside the carrying carts they’ve been supplied with.

It’s only when the girls are already in their rooms (and she and McKayla are squealing that they get to share theirs), that Aly wonders whether she should have greeted Mustafina and the rest of the Russian team. Gymnastics is a fiercely competitive sport, of course, but there’s genuine camaraderie between its athletes. No one was overjoyed when Mustafina’s knee practically came apart after that vault landing a year and a half ago… every athlete has a certain amount of respect for the others who have worked just as hard to achieve their own dream.

But then, Aly thinks, biting the corner of her lip, she’ll be seeing plenty of the Russian gymnastics team out there when they go head-to-head for the gold. Most of the Chinese and Romanian teams are injured so it looks like Russia will be their main adversary.

Yeah, now that she has a clearer head, she’s glad she didn’t try to be that loser that goes over to the cool girl on the other team to say hi.

“Hey, I’m gonna go get some ice,” Aly tells McKayla, who’s busy snapping pictures of their room and the view it provides of the London skyline.

“Buy me a water, please?” McKayla requests, smiling but not taking her eyes off her phone.

Aly nods, immediately remembering that McKayla probably didn’t see it, then steps out of their room. When she rounds off the corner and into the hallway that has the ice machine, she’s distracted, watching through the open doors as various athletes, from every nation imaginable, unpack their things, laugh, take pictures, and do the things that regular people do whenever they’re settling in to a new, exciting location. It’s almost easy to forget that these are all world-class athletes.

She’s walking down the hallway, smiling goofily at a pair of laughing athletes from where she guesses is New Zealand, when her gymnastic reflexes allow her to narrowly avoid tripping over a backpack laying on the carpeted floor. She feels a hand on her lower back, steadying her off-balance body. It takes her a split second to gather her composure and turn around to thank her helper, and another split second for her to widen her eyes, her words of gratitude stalling on her tongue.

Oh my God it’s Aliya Mustafina. That was the hand steadying her.

Her breath catches and her body freezes, and it really only takes one very long, stretched out second for Aly’s eyes to sweep and study the Russian—the flawless ponytail, the way her skin is kind of perfect, glowing and pale, and the way her eyes are large and colored halfway between green and gray, the shape of her slightly blushed cheeks, and the curve of her mouth… wait… she’s smiling. It’s not a wide smile, by any means, but there is a smile there, apologetic, and maybe a bit shy. Aly immediately takes a step back, to create some much-needed distance.

“Okay?” Even a simple word like this betrays her accent, but it only makes Aly appreciate it more; Aliya Mustafina is trying to speak her language in order to inquire on her well-being. It sends a dangerously exhilarating sensation down her chest and stomach.

“Yes, I’m okay,” Aly replies, aware of her own breathlessness. “Thanks for helping me.” Mustafina’s eyebrows furrow slightly, and Aly realizes that she probably didn’t fully understand her last sentence. “Thank you,” she repeats, and Mustafina smiles again, and shrugs.

Aly shifts her eyes to the floor and feels some slight panic. She really, really wishes she could speak at least some basic Russian, just to elaborate on her thanks, or maybe ask her what she thinks of London so far, or whether she’s done unpacking—anything, just to hear Mustafina say something else. Aly can’t remember ever hearing her voice before that “okay” from a minute ago, which she’s already replaying in her head over and over for reasons she can’t be bothered to figure out for now.

Mustafina gives her another smile, and that’s when Aly figures that she might as well stop gawking at the girl and get going. So she returns her smile with a blush, then turns back to the hallway. It takes her two steps to notice that Aliya is right behind her, and her mind is swollen with a thousand anxious thoughts—are they going to the same place? Should she ask? Would she understand? Should she walk with her?

Aly enters the small room with the ice dispenser and various snack and drink vending machines, and stands to the side and waits. Sure enough, Aliya Mustafina follows her inside a second later, and Aly almost wants to throw her arms up to the sky and ask, “really, universe? I have to be in this little room with her?” but she settles for moving on ahead towards the ice dispenser. Apparently Mustafina had the same idea, and their hands end up bumping against each other as they simultaneously reach for the dispenser’s button.

Mother of God. (Why does everything feel so awkward with Mustafina?)

“You can go first,” Aly blurts out rapidly, but of course the Russian only throws her a puzzled look.

Mustafina points to the dispenser, then to Aly. “You,” she says, and Aly can’t help memorizing the sound of her voice with that word, as well. She can add that “you” to the earlier “okay” and have… almost a whole sentence.

Jesus—something is wrong with her if she’s committing to memory the way Aliya Mustafina says English words.

Wordlessly, Aly nods and then reaches for the button on the dispenser. Upon its pressing, a low churning sound is emitted from the machine, and then a small bag of ice is neatly deposited for pick-up at the slot on the bottom.

“Ice.” Mustafina’s voice makes Aly pause when she grabs the bag. Did she imagine that? Is she hallucinating now? Or did she actually address her; did she actually try to speak another word in English?

Swallowing hard, Aly turns to the Russian girl, only to find her with a disarmingly sheepish smile that makes her insides melt, just a bit.

“Ice?” Aly repeats in a mumble, then follows Mustafina’s gaze to the bag in her hand. “Right—yes, this is ice.” She hopes fervently that the girl’s limited English won’t keep her from understanding what she’s about to say: “How do you say ‘ice’ in Russian?”

Mustafina’s smile widens with understanding, and then she says something that sounds a lot like “low-te” but with a very heavy and closed “oh” sound.

Aly tries to repeat it, but Mustafina laughs and shakes her head. Aly tries again, but it sounds worse than the last time and she has no choice but to join Mustafina in laughter; apparently her Russian is hopeless.

Her laughter dies down into a grin, and because she isn’t sure of what other words they can try to teach each other, Aly presses the ice button again, retrieves another bag, and holds it out to Mustafina.

Mustafina has to step forward to grab it, and at their increased proximity, Aly feels it again—that nervous tightening in her chest, that reluctance to look in the eye someone who’s so beautiful. She gives Aly another smile, then takes the bag from her and says something slowly enough that Aly catches all the syllables.

“Spa-see-bwa?” Aly repeats, feeling as though she’s frying her brain trying to recreate the exact pronunciation the Russian gymnast used.

Mustafina grins with surprise, making Aly cock her head to the side slightly, wondering if that means she did well or even worse than her usual.

“Yes,” Mustafina tells her with a firm nod. “Good.”

“Really? That was good?” She knows her obvious excitement must make her look like a dork, but she doesn’t care. “And that means ‘thank you’?”

“Yes. Thank you,” the Russian says confidently, engraving the sound into Aly’s mind. Her heavy accent, emphasized by the way she rolls her tongue more, and stresses the vowels more, makes Aly momentarily forget that they’re having a conversation—a real one—because all she wants is for the girl to keep talking. It’s the voice, the accent, the manner with which she positions her lips to pronounce everything; it’s all kinds of mesmerizing.

At the sound of footsteps nearby, Aly immediately takes a step back. It occurs to her that she’s always the one creating distance. Even if she might be the one (the only one) who wishes they could stand just a little bit closer.

“Bye, Aly,” Mustafina bids her, snapping Aly from her daze (was she staring at the Russian? Oh my God). Aly is a bit disappointed that she can’t think of anything to say to prolong their conversation, and it’s while she’s distracted with that thought that she misinterprets Mustafina’s step towards her. Before Aly can realize that Mustafina is about to hug her, she’s already stretched out her arm for a handshake, effectively stopping Mustafina in her tracks.

Her stomach sinks to the ground when she sees Mustafina bite the corner of her lip, seemingly hiding a tiny smile, then grip her hand gently with her own. It’s too late to try to fix things and hug her, so Aly focuses on the handshake instead, and gives her a proper smile, one that doesn’t betray how nervous she is. Mustafina raises her bag of ice and returns her smile. “Thank you, Aly.”

“Um… spa-see-bwa… for helping me not fall before.” Tensely, she licks her lips—how much of that did Mustafina really understand?—and thinks about how she called her by her first name. The way it sounded from her lips.. was like it wasn’t a foreign word. “Aliya.”

The sound of her name doesn’t go by unnoticed by the Russian; she pauses by the door, gives Aly one last glance that’s colored by a faint smile, then exits the room.

Aly remains there for a minute longer, mind pleasantly empty now that the Russian girl isn’t there making her hyperventilate. She stares at the open door for a few seconds, wanting to leave, but simultaneously thinking that she could stay in there for a very long time, listening to Mustafina’s voice reverberating off the walls of her chest.

Was she really there? Did they really talk? Did that really just happen?

Later—did she wait five seconds or five minutes?—when she’s back at her room, McKayla is still unpacking. Aly stands by the door, clutching the bag of ice that might have started to melt already, aware of not much else except the accented words still echoing in her head.

_“Bye, Aly. Thank you.”_

Stop thinking about this…

“Aly?” The call makes Aly snap her eyes up from their carpeted floor to McKayla’s frown. “You okay there?”

“Yeah,” Aly replies, aware that her voice sounds a little less lively than usual. “Here’s your ice.”

“The ice was for you,” McKayla reminds with her trademark haughtiness. “Where’s my water, woman?”

Crap. She totally forgot that.

“Well, this is almost melted. It will be water if you wait about ten minutes,” Aly jokes weakly. “I’m sorry, I got a little… sidetracked.”

Don’t think about Mustafina. Don’t think about Mustafina.

“Yeah? What happened?”

She can get away with not answering this honestly, or outright lying. McKayla’s level of interest in this conversation is understandably low; they’re in the Olympics, for crying out loud. Talking about ice isn’t that exciting. But she swallows down her apprehension instead, and says, as evenly as she can manage, “I bumped into one of the Russian gymnasts.”

McKayla glances up from her luggage for a quick second, just long enough to let Aly know that she’s listening.

“Which one of them?”

“Aliya Mustafina.” 

 

She’s said that name before, but it feels odd to say it now; it’s weightier, and it feels like it means something.

McKayla has the expected dramatic response. “Oooh, the ice queen.”

“She’s really nice,” Aly responds, a little too quickly. “I mean, she was nice to me. She taught me some Russian, too.”

As soon as she adds that last part, Aly regrets it; McKayla shifts her attention to her and Aly is tempted to take a step back into the wall to avoid her friend’s intense gaze.

“Really? So you two actually talked?”

“For a little bit.”

“How was it?”

“I told you; she’s nice.” And beautiful. Really, really beautiful.

“And she taught you some Russian words?” McKayla is smiling. That’s not a good sign. “Which ones?”

“’Ice’ and ‘thank you.’”

She laughs then, but Aly isn’t sure if she’s amused by what she just told her, or by Aly herself—she feels so, so uncomfortable right now, and it probably shows.

“Did you teach her some English, too?”

“She kind of speaks it already,” Aly answers, unsure of whether she should even say another word about her encounter with the Russian. Now that she’s talking about it with someone else, she realizes that it really wasn’t that much of a big deal. These are the Olympics and they’re going to be seeing other gymnasts practically every hour of every day. With this in mind, Aly forces herself to be nonchalant as she adds, “we talked for like, thirty seconds. I barely remember what happened.”

You remember everything…

_“Ice.”_

_“Ice? Right—yes, this is ice.”_

“Oh, okay.” McKayla’s attention is once again focused on her luggage, much to Aly’s relief. Aly herself puts down the bag of half-melted ice on their small kitchen sink and slumps down on her bed. “You haven’t even touched your bags yet.”

She throws one languid look at her pile of luggage and sinks down on her bed. “I’m having a lazy moment. Leave me alone.”

She’s in no mood to unpack, and they have a meeting with their coaches in less than 40 minutes. Can she just take a quick nap? She savors the softness of the covers, closing her eyes to rest for the first time since they landed in London. She doesn’t think about her routines, doesn’t think about the pressure of being the team captain, doesn’t think about the hopes and expectations of an entire nation, resting on their hands. And she tries her very hardest not to think about Aliya Mustafina, and that perfect smile, and those impossibly bright eyes, and that voice that’s gotten her almost addicted and wanting to hear her say every word ever invented. She’s really close to allowing her mind to be dragged into unconsciousness…

Until: “So. How do you say ‘ice’ in Russian?”


	2. Aliya

The first time Aliya Mustafina hugs Aly Raisman, it’s not a very remarkable event. Every other time after that is, but the first time is just before the qualifications, and she’s not really paying attention to the American girl. Her attention is on her teammates, because Anastasia is having a panic attack and Afan’s whispered reassurances are apparently not sufficient to calm the girl down. Vika is commenting offhandedly on the fit of her leotard, and every other team is gathered into groups inside the waiting room, separated by a few feet and massively different languages. Aliya is silent, as she usually is when she’s mentally prepping for a competition. She nods and hums along with Vika’s words and watches distractedly as Maria adjusts her jacket and pants, but her mind is far, far away.

She ponders on her chances at these Games. Because of her still-recovering knee, she came to the Olympics unburdened by heavy expectations, predicted to do decently, but not exceptionally—unlike Vika, who was presented to their nation as the great hope for gold. Aliya herself was touted as a bars specialist and nothing more, even if every fiber of her wants to do more, and prove that her injury didn’t define her as a gymnast.

It happens when the teams line up to greet each other before entering the arena. Aliya’s thoughts are revolving so tightly on the upcoming competition that she’s barely paying any attention to the gymnasts passing by and the hugs and handshakes she’s exchanging with them. The American team walks on by, greeting each gymnast from Team Russia; Aliya registers shaking hands with the Maroney girl, and then turning her gaze to Vika as she comments something vague about her vaults. That’s when Aliya is pulled into a hug, by someone whose face she doesn’t get a chance to see. She can’t help noticing that the girl smells a lot like flowers and something fruity, and she also notices the warmth in the hug—it’s strange, even, the way there’s some amount of familiarity there. No one so far has given her a hug; everyone has seemed to prefer the customary handshake followed by two air pecks on the cheeks, which is just detached enough that it doesn’t seem too nice, or too rude.

Aliya goes through the motions and hugs the girl back politely, curious now to see whom, exactly, she’s hugging. As she’s pulling away, her eyes quickly scan the other American girls nearby, and her mind checks them off one by one—Maroney, Douglas, Wieber, Ross… wait a second…

Aliya’s entire body stiffens once she’s backed away and sees that in fact, the gymnast she had been hugging without much conviction was Aly Raisman, the American with whom she had had that oddly fun half-Russian, half-English conversation about ice yesterday.

Raisman’s friendly smile is the first thing Aliya takes in, because it’s bright and kind of amazing, and not like the smiles her competitors usually give her. Then she looks into Raisman’s beaming eyes and feels an inexplicable flutter in her chest.

_“Really? That was good? And that means ‘thank you’?”_

It had taken her a bit of time after the ice machine incident to get over the surprise of talking to someone who made her feel like a regular, ordinary girl, and not a rival gymnast. And it took some time, too, to stop replaying the incident in her mind; the American, it turns out, is sort of fascinating to watch and interact with, and none of that is helped by the fact that she has an obvious sort of beauty that’s highlighted by the amiable, unassuming way she carries herself.

Aliya wants to stare. And that flutter becomes a full-on tremor when Raisman says, in a very low voice and with a small, embarrassed grin, “oo-dah-cha, Aliya.”

It seems to Aliya that for at least a very short moment, all the air has been sucked from the room, because it’s just that hard to breathe properly. Speechless, she watches Raisman blush, eyes shifting with what seems to be nervousness, then rejoin her group a few feet away. There’s a corner of her mind that’s nervous right then, that maybe Raisman is just being a nice competitor and her body is betraying her in the worst way possible, reacting to the girl’s beauty in ways it shouldn’t.

One of the Olympic employees directs the teams to line up behind their signs, and each gymnast complies, but it takes Aliya a minute to finally digest that Aly Raisman just tried to say “good luck” in Russian. And she didn’t just imagine it, as she has begun to fear; Maria, who was standing beside her and has now moved in front of her, looks over her shoulder to give her a puzzled frown.

“What did she say to you?” Maria asks her in a hushed murmur, but Aliya just shakes her head dismissively, and tries to turn her focus back on the competition ahead. The teams are finally led inside the arena, and Aliya jumps at the chance to think about something other than Aly Raisman. The North Greenwich Arena is just as grand as she imagined, and the significance of what the gymnasts are about to engage in makes Aliya take a deep, anxious breath. These are the Olympics, and that’s what should be at the forefront in her mind. Not some American gymnast who’s charmingly and endearingly trying to speak her language. For all she knows, Raisman is trying to distract her from the competition. Why would an American gymnast want to be nice to her? Why would she care about Aliya at all, and enough to make an effort to wish her luck and be understood?

Is Raisman just really that nice? Well, she certainly seems nice, Aliya thinks, biting the corner of her lip… yesterday, when they had their encounter in the vending room, she was surprisingly eager to talk to her, which only made Aliya surprise herself—she’s not one prone to chatter, especially with rival gymnasts whose languages are not at all like her own. And yet…

_“Ice.”_

She began the conversation, didn’t she? Aly Raisman simply followed that up with a comment of her own.

_“Ice? Right—yes, this is ice.”_

And then that request, which initially caught her off-guard…

_“How do you say ‘ice’ in Russian?”_

Then came Raisman’s self-conscious laugh when her pronunciation proved terrible, which Aliya can still kind of hear in her head, and it still makes her smile now…

“Aliya?” It’s Vika. They’ve finally arrived at the Team Russia corner of the arena, and everyone’s already put their backpacks down, except her.

“Right,” Aliya says quickly, setting her backpack down as well and avoiding the inquiring gazes from her teammates.

“What’s going on with you?” Vika asks, her tone one of concern but also curiosity. “Pasha told me that one of the Americans was saying things to you.”

Aliya wonders how she should respond to this inquiry. It’s not like she has anything to hide, but this isn’t something she’d like to broadcast either. For one, she’d have to start at the beginning and tell everyone about the ice room encounter, an event that for some reason, she figured she should not share. Second, there’s a high likelihood that her teammates will not look at things favorably. Yes, all gymnasts are bonded by their sport, and there’s supposed to be friendship between countries and etc, but this is still gymnastics, and in the Olympics, nonetheless—there’s a lot of heated, historic rivalries and any semblance of friendliness between her and the captain of the American team is going to be frowned upon.

After taking a moment to deliberate on these factors, Aliya sighs and responds evenly, “she wished us all good luck today.”

Shrugs from Afan and Pasha seem to settle the matter, but Vika is obviously not convinced. In these moments, there’s nothing that Aliya hates more than the fact that her best friend can read her so well, and sniff out all her lies and omissions. To distract Vika from her suspicions, Aliya sits down beside her friend and kisses her cheek affectionately.

“We don’t need luck, however. We can win this,” she tells her, inserting as much confidence as she can into her words. Vika and Grishina are the youngest among them, and also the most prone to self-doubt. Consequently, Aliya and Afan have become the team’s support system, a role that Aliya has resented in the past (she’s only a few months older than Vika after all), but is capable of embracing now. “We’ll make Russia proud.” She averts her gaze to the spectators’ area, where she can spot a single Russian flag standing out among a sea of Union Jacks. “You’ll make Russia proud, Vika.”

———————

Finally, the first day is over. Russia finished second to the United States, but not by a lot, which is a relief. Aliya is especially proud of Vika for qualifying first for the all-around finals, even if she already knew that was going to happen. She had hoped, fervently and painfully, that she would qualify too, but she hadn’t been as sure about her chances on that. Against so many disheartening odds, however, she did qualify, and in a rush of giddiness, she envelops Vika in a tight hug and kisses her cheek. Once they part and exchange winks of encouragement, Aliya’s eyes scan the scoreboard. Then, for reasons that she doesn’t want to study too deeply, she smiles.

Aly Raisman qualified in second place.

——————

The first time Aliya Mustafina hugs Aly Raisman, she’s not paying attention. But the next time, she is.

Team USA and Team Russia leave the arena side-by-side, and Aliya curses the universe that she’s the last gymnast in her line while Aly Raisman is first on hers, for it means that they won’t even make eye contact unless Raisman walks backwards. Aliya notices the tension within the American team—Wieber still in tears, Maroney and Ross acting as buffer between her and a solemn-looking Raisman…

She can’t say that she isn’t glad to see Wieber out of contention for the all-around gold, but that is due to Vika’s personal feelings regarding her loss to the American last year at Worlds. In every other aspect, viewing this as an opposing gymnast, there’s nothing to be happy about these results. After witnessing Raisman’s routines today, Aliya has concluded that Raisman and Wieber are a lot alike, except in that everything Wieber does, Raisman has the potential to do better. Wieber only outscored Raisman on bars, if she remembers correctly… and there’s no way to overlook Raisman’s spectacularly difficult floor routine. So Raisman’s qualification shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise… and it’s good news to the American team, and bad news to everyone else, right?

Once most of the gymnasts have begun to gather their things from the large lobby, waiting for their vans in order to head back to the Olympic Village, Aliya scans her surroundings for Raisman. She spots her close by but off to the side, eyes downcast as she talks to the Maroney girl while the rest of the American team and coaches seem to be hovering near Wieber. There’s really no way to approach Raisman without calling attention to herself, so Aliya takes a moment to tune out the chatter surrounding her, and to breathe and think about what she wants to do.

What does she want to do? There’s a small, annoying voice in her head replying that what she wants is to hug the American, to pay back that good-luck embrace from before that she didn’t quite return. There’s another voice saying that what she should want is distance, actually, because Aly Raisman isn’t supposed to be holding her attention like this. Aliya Mustafina is not the sort of girl who takes the time to plan out how she’s going to get near another competitor in order to hug them—that’s simply unheard of, and quite honestly, she’s hardly recognizing herself.

Before she really has time to weigh all her different urges against one another and decide on an appropriate course of action, Aliya finds herself approaching Raisman, only stopping when she’s close enough to hear parts of what Maroney is telling her; something that sounds like “ice queen incoming.”

Those words make no sense together. Did she hear that right? She really needs to practice her English.

Raisman turns around immediately to face her, and Aliya, who was about to tap her shoulder, lets herself smile without nervousness or embarrassment. As far as she knows, everyone is still focusing on Wieber, or their team vans, or their bags. If she can keep herself from staring into Raisman’s awfully flawless face (avoid the eyes! she tells herself), then she can handle this without humiliating herself.

She breathes in, exhales, and speaks up. “Good luck. In competition.”

Aliya is very much aware that she has an accent. Her English isn’t poor; it’s actually the best in the team (although that isn’t saying much). So she’s somewhat confident that she will be understood. But Raisman doesn’t reply right away, or even react at all. Suddenly, Aliya is nervous. Her English is terrible, isn’t it? Maybe she cursed her family instead of wishing her luck.

She’s about to apologize (she knows that word, at least), when Raisman finally lets out a short breath and breaks into the widest smile she’s given her yet.

Once again, Aliya wants to stare. This girl—the smile, the bright gaze, the blushing reserve—it’s almost too much.

“I’m sorry; I was distracted. You surprised me,” she laughs. It’s a very nice laugh… “Thanks, Aliya. Oo-dah-cha. That’s ‘good luck’ in Russian, right? Did I say that correctly?”

“Yes. It was correct,” Aliya states with a grin. Her pronunciation is still not perfect, but there’s something legitimately riveting about the way Aly Raisman speaks (or attempts to speak) Russian. She… sings it, sort of. Doesn’t stress the syllables enough, so the words sound softer, like they’re blending in with her heartbeats. Aliya thinks she could hear her voice forever. “Your Russian, not bad.”

“My Russian is horrible,” she replies, giggling this time. Aliya knows she won’t be able to stop herself from engraving the sound of her giggles and laugh to memory. “Your English is really good, though.”

“I am learning still,” she shrugs. The second between the end of her sentence and the beginning of Raisman’s response is when Aliya realizes that she’s been talking to the American girl for much too long—no doubt, her team has noticed.

“Well, if you ever need to practice your English, you can talk to me.”

Aliya’s eyes snap to Maroney, who’s been watching them with interest, but now looks appalled for some reason.

“Yes, and I will teach you more Russian. Good Russian,” Aliya responds, focus back on Raisman. She steps forward, slowly, wondering whether Raisman will want a handshake as she did yesterday, or a hug as she did this morning. She smiles with happiness when she feels the American girl’s arms reach around her neck and shoulders, even if the position is a bit awkward because Aliya is about six centimeters taller.

This hug… is much, much better. It doesn’t last much longer than their first one, but Aliya smiles with satisfaction that she had the chance to do this again, and be a little closer to the American for just a few seconds. The proximity should make her uncomfortable, she thinks fleetingly, but it doesn’t. Or at least, not in the way she expected. There is still some nervousness making her heartbeats slightly erratic, and she’s still not confident that she won’t lose track of her thoughts if she gives in and really looks at Raisman, and studies the details of her face the way she’s been tempted to. But Raisman doesn’t feel awkwardly unfamiliar. She feels… nice.

Aliya nods a farewell when they pull apart, not wanting to smile again so as not to give too much of herself away. She turns to walk back to her team, and hears what sounds like “what was that?” from Maroney. Once she reaches the rest of Team Russia, she almost swallows hard at the intensity of their stares—especially Vika, who’s looking at her like she’s grown a second head. Aliya is usually self-assured but now she has to wonder, however briefly, whether she committed a mistake by talking to an American gymnast. Was that against the rules? Did that make her or her team look bad?

Vika is the one who speaks up first, with words heavy with disbelief, and the same amount of appalled surprise that Maroney seemed to have earlier: “Alka… what was that?”


	3. Sodas and Depressing Music

The first time Aly cries at the Olympic Village, only one person sees her. Later on, she thinks that the _right_ person saw her.

Team USA is unloading the van that’s dropping them off from the North Greenwich Arena. The entire ride here was silent and awkward, and Aly, who usually sits in the front with Jordyn and McKayla, decided it’d be more prudent to sit in the back and let Jordyn have her space. Even the coaches and team assistants have apparently agreed to let the dust settle first before making any comments on what happened today, but Aly isn’t sure whether this is good or bad—are they acknowledging that they, too, thought Jordyn would make it and not her?

There’s a strong ache in Aly’s chest that she just can’t get rid of, battling with the still-lingering rush of her earlier personal triumph. Two sides of Aly; the one that loves Jordyn and has come to hope for her dreams as she hopes for her own, and that side that still can’t believe that she qualified for the all-around. She didn’t know there could be anything in her life that would make her feel an equal measure of happiness and despair, but this is it—she’s found it.

The five girls head to their separate rooms in silence; Jordyn, Gabby, and Kyla to theirs, while McKayla accompanies Aly to their own. The rooms are relatively close; there’s only a small hallway with the floor’s elevators and also a maintenance room between them. Still—tonight, as Aly sets her bags down onto her bed, that room seems a million miles away.

She stands by the bed, looking at the crumpled sheets and blankets in front of her, eyes clouded by worry and… fear, somehow. Fear that things are going to change in the dynamics of their group, fear that she’s lost one of her closest friends, and fear that Tuesday, the most important day for Team USA, isn’t going to be good at all.

She should say something to Jordyn. She needs to. They haven’t talked, they haven’t cleared the air…

Aly has to swallow down an impossibly large lump in her throat, and wonders: how is she going to look Jo in the eye and ask her to be proud of her? How is she going to perform on the all-around when—

“She’s gonna be okay, you know,” McKayla tells her quietly, waking Aly from her tense reverie. “You outscored her. You outscored every one of us, everyone out there but one person. You deserved that spot.”

“No one thought I’d get in and not her,” Aly points out evenly, gathering the courage to look at McKayla and add, “even _I_ didn’t think so. Did you?”

McKayla’s emotions are always boiling just underneath the surface, which always made their friendship unlikely and fun—Aly’s never been that free, and can’t imagine having everything in her mind and heart exposed like that. It’d be too scary, and McKayla is the bold one, the one who isn’t scared of being read like a book, as she is being read now.

“I was rooting for you,” McKayla replies, quieter than before. Aside from the low hum of the air conditioning, there’s not much else to be heard in their room besides the shuffling of their feet. “I was rooting for all three of you, but especially you, because…” Then… she’s hard to read, suddenly. Aly tries, but McKayla isn’t giving anything away. “You know.” And now, obviously she doesn’t want to elaborate on her point.

There’s a heavy cloud of discomfort settling between them, and Aly wonders whether talking about this isn’t just making her thoughts on things murkier. Jordyn is her priority; that’s what she should be dealing with and not… whatever is going on with McKayla at the moment.

Wordlessly, Aly heads to the door and exits the room, purposely avoiding looking at McKayla for fear that she’ll change her mind, and want to hide out in the room instead of doing what must be done. She can choose to hide. McKayla’s been her shield against tough situations before, and wouldn’t hesitate in performing the same duty now. But she’s the captain of this team, and this isn’t the time to be a coward.

She takes the five or so steps that it takes to reach the room that her other three teammates share, and then stands in front of the door. She measures her heart rate. Measures her breathing. And finds that she’s rooted to the spot, like the blood in her veins is frozen.

No one is passing by, and the only world she’s in is this empty hallway and this closed door in front of her, behind which are the things she loves and fears. She needs to knock. She needs to talk to her friend. Losing Jordyn would be like losing a limb.

“Jo… I’m so sorry,” she whispers. The wood and the paint and the hinges don’t say anything back, of course. No one is going to hear her. “I just… can’t be happy for myself if you’re not happy for me.” Her voice is quieter than her heartbeats. “I didn’t think my dream would cost you your own. I’m so, so sorry…” Aly leans forward, feels the weight in her chest melt, and rise to her eyes, and then her forehead is pressed against the wall as she feels the first tear escape her.

She’s always been a crier. It wasn’t going to change now. She just hoped that all the tears she shed in the Olympics would be of happiness, not… not this.

Aly manages to wipe the tear that spilled onto her cheek, and she’s taking a step back from the door, re-evaluating it and planning a way to knock and say the right things. And that’s when she hears the elevator’s low ring and what sounds like a group of girls laughing among themselves. Aly doesn’t bother checking to see who it is. She extends her hand to the door, and lays her palm against the cool, sturdy wood.

Come on, Raisman. Knock.

She closes her eyes, and takes a breath as deep as she would if she were going to dive underwater.

Just knock.

“Aly?” The voice. The accent.

Aly immediately snatches her hand back, and turns. It’s Mustafina, alongside Komova and Paseka. Aliya is the one who called her, and Aly can see the other two aren’t as pleased to see her.

“Hi,” she greets Mustafina back, voice a bit hoarse from disuse, and crying, and just the general miserable feeling pooled inside her gut. “Hello,” she says, this time to the other two girls.

She remembers that she just saw Mustafina about an hour ago, when the Russian approached her in the arena’s lobby. She made her laugh when that miserable feeling had just started sinking its teeth into her; made her smile when she started feeling strangled; hugged her and wished her luck when she was thinking no one was going to do that to her anymore.

Mustafina turns to her companions, and comments something in Russian that Aly wishes she could understand… until she notices the reluctant frowns from her teammates, and then Komova’s exasperated sigh—suddenly, she doesn’t want to know what’s going on.

Komova and Paseka do leave, presumably to their rooms, while Mustafina stays behind, watching her. Aly realizes she’s still standing in front of Jordyn’s door, and has done nothing that she set out to do. She takes a few steps away from the door, afraid of being heard from behind it, but stops before she gets within any sort of proximity to Mustafina.

“They don’t like me much, do they?” Aly asks drily, less out of curiosity and more because she just wants to think about something that doesn’t involve Jordyn.

Mustafina’s eyes are sweeping her face with a tiny trace of a frown, and Aly wonders what she’s seeing. She’s trying not to look too much at the Russian, because everything about her is just so distracting, but it’s difficult to restrain herself.

“American gymnast captain, not a good friend to have,” Mustafina responds with that little shrug Aly’s gotten accustomed to seeing from her.

And then it dawns on her that Mustafina called her a friend. Or something like that—is she reading too much into this?

“Yeah, if today hadn’t been so… dramatic.. I’m sure my friends would have plenty to say about me talking to you.” Mustafina furrows her eyebrows together, almost as though in concentration, and Aly doesn’t know whether she understood everything she said. She adds, to clarify, “I don’t know if my friends like you, either.”

They trade smiles; Aly has to force hers, a little, but it’s a relief that she can do it at all, as she had thought that maybe for today, she would forget how.

“You are okay?” Mustafina inquires, and her usual harsh accent doesn’t sound as harsh anymore.

“Yes,” she replies, before recognizing that that response was a reflex, like a knee-jerk reaction to being asked about herself. She’s trained her manners almost as much as she’s trained her gymnastics. “No, actually… I’m not okay.”

“You are worried? For competition?”

Aly shakes her head carefully. There are as many thoughts in her mind as there are fears in her heart, and one of them is that everyone is right and rival gymnasts can’t be friends, because there just can’t be any trust between competitors. Mustafina may be nice, and she may make Aly sort of melt and evaporate whenever she looks at her, and she may be the most gorgeous human being she’s ever laid eyes on, but, as her red and white jacket remind her, she’s from the Russian Federation. It’s hard enough for Aly to share her private worries with anyone, and adding her natural anxiety to Mustafina’s nationality makes her stay still and silent.

“Vika and Masha ask me to get drink,” Aliya says, moving past her unanswered question. “Come get drink with me.”

Aly doesn’t spare a thought to Mustafina’s invitation before they’re walking side by side down the hall, both girls in silence. When they enter the same ice and vending room in which they first began to talk, Aly halts abruptly by the door, not quite following Mustafina inside. Something in her alerts to the danger; it’s always so, so hard to stop thinking about Aliya once her mind is filled with her. She should want to stay away, she should keep her distance, but Mustafina has some sort of goddamn strong gravity, and when she turns to look at her by the door, and trains her perfect, clear eyes on her, Aly feels sort of helpless.

“Do you want drink?” Mustafina points in the direction of the machines, and indeed there are a lot of options. Mustafina herself has already filled a bag with four different bottles, all with strange Eastern European lettering that Aly has no hope of recognizing. She presses a button and gets a lemon-flavored American soda, nodding a small thanks. They’re quiet for a minute, and it’s a slight pursing of the lips on the Russian’s part that makes Aly think she’s nervous, too. “You want to walk?”

Aly blinks back some surprise. “You mean outside?” Of course she means outside; they’re not going to wander around the hallways of this building. But she just wants to ask, and make sure—does Mustafina want to, like… hang out with her? Really?

“Yes, outside. And sit on…” The Russian girl turns her gaze up, probably trying to find the right word, but Aly can’t stop herself from focusing on the girl’s perfect, perfect face. “Grass?” She smiles brightly, obviously satisfied with the word.

“Oh, the grass outside.” Aly doesn’t know what she’s thinking. She must not be thinking. And yet… “Yeah, sure. Let’s go.”

——————————-

Aliya knows she’s not thinking her actions through. If she were, she wouldn’t be sitting so closely to the American gymnastics captain on the soft grassy area overlooking the other side of the Olympic Village. She’d be with her teammates, enjoying the last hours before they have to go to bed and rest for tomorrow’s practice and Tuesday’s team finals. Instead, what started as a conversation about the soda machines evolved into Aliya letting Raisman taste a bit of her drink.

“Oh my God,” the American laughs, scrunching her face and giving Aliya a bewildered look that makes her laugh, too. “What is that?”

“Xtra-Sitr,” Aliya replies, amused by Aly’s attempts to get rid of the taste by taking a large gulp of her own soda. “Russian drink is bad?”

“No, it’s _awful_ ,” Raisman laughs again, and Aliya almost closes her eyes so she can listen to the sound more closely. She’s starting to wonder whether the American girl is something she’s getting addicted to. “Here, try mine.”

Aliya takes a small sip, and is surprised by how… bland it tastes. “Not very strong flavor.”

“Yeah, compared to that cough syrup you’re drinking,” Aly chuckles, and maybe she’s aware that Aliya is still trying to translate all the words in her mind in order to make sense of the joke, because she adds, “your soda is really strong.” She clears her throat and seems to examine her bottle for a few seconds, mind very far away. Aliya really wishes she could ask what the American is thinking, but she did, just a few minutes ago when they were back in the hotel, and Raisman didn’t answer. So she waits, reminding herself that she should be glad the American is even here, next to her; she could have refused her offer to step outside. “You know,” Aly speaks up suddenly, and Aliya snaps her attention back to her. “I don’t even like this soda. Jordyn likes it. I have no idea why I got it.”

It might be the sadness in her tone, or her defeated posture, or the way her eyes are starting to become cloudy, but Aliya feels an odd ache in her chest, and it occurs to her how unusual this is, for her to hurt for someone that’s not really that close to her.

She speaks up before she registers the action. “Sometimes, is hard competition with friend. Want to win, but want friend to win. I understand.”

Raisman gives her a pained glance, then seems to give up on keeping her emotions in check, hugging her knees to her chest and leaning her head down. After a second of silence, Aliya swallows hard when she hears a low, muffled sniffle.

Aliya has taken care of many crying girls before. She can’t think of a single day at Lake Krugloe where someone wasn’t shedding a few tears after a fall on beam, or because of an injury that would keep making reappearances. She’s cried too… uncountable times.

Her mind races with things she could say to the American.

It’ll get better tomorrow. You’re a great gymnast. Your friend is proud of you, trust me.

And she almost slaps herself when, out of all the comforting words she has in mind, she instead blurts out something completely stupid and irrelevant.

“When I am sad, Russian music very good to be happy again.”

Slowly, Raisman lifts her head and exposes a flushed, tear-stained face that’s so tragically beautiful, it causes Aliya’s heart to beat strangely, like it’s shaking inside her chest. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard Russian music. Well, not the modern stuff.” It’s hard to concentrate on anything else when she watches the girl wipe her cheek with the back of her hand, leaving behind tiny remnants of tears on her lashes.

Breathe, Aliya…

“Want to hear?” she asks, her voice a bit more strained than she intended.

When Raisman nods, Aliya fumbles with her phone and accidentally presses play on a song that… is not exactly the sort of music she meant when she mentioned that “be happy again” part. The soft piano and the violins and the sappy singing make her blush furiously.

“That’s… interesting. I’m definitely feeling happier now.” It doesn’t take much mental translation for her to figure out that Raisman is kind of, sort of, making fun of her. Aliya has never taken well to being mocked, but Raisman’s teasing smile is so bright that it charges the atmosphere between them; Aliya starts to laugh, and Aly joins her, and this is the first time in the Olympics in which Aliya doesn’t think about what she’s here to do. All she can think about is the beaming girl beside her. “You know what’s funny?” Aly asks, still laughing, “I’m sure this song was supposed to be mellow and calm, but the Russian language sounds so angry, no matter what you’re saying.”

Aliya has heard that about Russian before. It must be the rough syllables, or the way you have to stress more letters than in the other languages in order to be understood. She shrugs, and replies with a smile, “your Russian, if more angry, then it would not be as bad.”

Aly’s jaw slacks in shock, but her eyes are still gleaming with excitement. “I thought you said my Russian was good!”

For that hilarious, indignant reaction alone, Aliya thinks it was worth it to more or less insult the girl’s attempts to speak her language. “No, I said I teach you good Russian. Your Russian not very good right now.”

She should be getting used to Raisman’s smiles. The girl smiles a lot, and laughs and giggles. Yet each smile sends the same strong, electric shiver down Aliya’s body, makes her breaths shorten and her heart erratic. This isn’t something she’s used to—it’s not something she foresees ever getting used to.

“Fine then. How do you say ‘you are’ in Russian?”

“Voo-EE,” she pronounces clearly, noticing the defiant smirk on the American’s face, and anticipating that she’s up to something.

“And how do you say ‘stupid’?”

Before she can help herself, Aliya is chuckling with realization. So that’s why she wanted to know…

“Gloo-oh-peh.”

Aly pauses, gathering her breath, and it’s only the excitement in her eyes that betrays how solemn she sounds: “voo-EE gloo-oh-peh, Aliya.”

They burst out laughing together, and in the back of her mind, hidden behind all her breathless impressions of Aly’s smile and eyes and voice, she registers that their arms are touching… they’ve moved closer together. Somehow. One of them did. Was it her?

Aliya feels her phone vibrate, and sees a text message from Vika. Apparently they’re done eating and are going to the ice tubs. That reminds her—she’s Aliya Mustafina, Russian gymnast, in the Olympics. She keeps forgetting…

“It is Vika. Asking for drink,” she explains when Raisman is clearly curious.

“Oh.” Something crosses the American’s eyes; something that seems like doubt, or insecurity, but ultimately, something that Aliya can’t figure out completely. “You and Viktoria Komova are really close, right?”

“Yes, she’s close girl friend.” Instantly, she notices, Raisman’s eyebrows twitch, like a frown that’s gone in a flash. Once again, Aliya doesn’t understand the American, and wishes she could read her better. Or speak better English.

“Girl… friend. Right.”

Her teammates are an easy topic, so Aliya doesn’t hesitate to add with a fond smile, “Vika and I, like sisters. Since very young. Very close, always.”

“Yeah… that’s, um, noticeable.” Hesitation. That’s something Raisman hadn’t displayed before in any of their encounters. Aliya doesn’t know what to make of it.

Then, because she forgets that Aly was avoiding talking about her teammates before, she asks, “you and rest of American team, close?”

“Yeah…” The same sadness is there before, except that it seems faded into a scar, no longer an open wound. “We’re all close… I’ve known Jordyn forever. And I’ve gotten really close to McKayla in the last year.”

Maroney… the girl who’s always with Raisman. An image of the two hugging after warm-ups splashes inside Aliya’s mind.

“Yes, always together…” she murmurs, watching the grass bend in front of her when she stretches her foot. Something about that memory bothers her.

“Hey I hope you don’t mind me asking this… are friends in Russia really affectionate with each other?”

Aliya is learning to hate unfamiliar words. “Affec… sorry, do not understand.”

“Um… like, for an example, you and Komova… you hug and kiss a lot.”

“Friend in America, do not kiss and hug?”

Aly shifts uncomfortably, almost wincing. “Um… we do… just not as often as you guys seem to do it. I guess what I mean is, you have to be really, really close to someone to kiss them. Even if it’s on the cheek, a kiss means a lot.”

“In Russia, too. I do not kiss everyone. Must like person. Must be friend, or more than friend.”

“The way you guys do it, even the ones on the cheeks, it’d be hard to read if you were in the US,” Raisman explains with a small smile. “I don’t think I’d be able to tell when it’s a friendly kiss or… you know, the other kind.”

“No, you tell. Two kinds of kiss. Kiss is different.”

Raisman shifts again, her eyes averted to the expanse of grass in front of them. Dusk has snuck up on them, and in the pale light of the retreating sun, Aliya notices the contours of the girl’s jaw and when her lips part to mumble, “is it different?”

She doesn’t know why she does it, or how she does it without even thinking about it; doesn’t know how it doesn’t feel awkward, even while her stomach and chest are in turmoil, even when her head feels feverish in the agitation of her thoughts. But she does it; she leans towards Raisman and presses a soft kiss on her warm cheek, close to the mouth. Her lips linger, for just an extra second, and she loses track of what point she was trying to make.

When she backs away, Aly’s eyes, she notices, are closed.

Aliya doesn’t breathe until the other girl opens her eyes and looks at her.

“Aliya…” Raisman never calls her by name… especially not when her voice is going to sound barely above a whisper, like it’s careful and nervous, and coming from deeper within her than just her throat. “What kind was that?”


	4. Undercover

The first time Aly Raisman meets the Russian men’s gymnastics team, she wishes she hadn’t.

At first, she doesn’t feel it. Or rather, she feels it, but she wonders whether maybe she’s imagining it; she’s had some very vivid daydreams before. When she closes her eyes and goes over her routines before stepping up to the mat, it’s almost as though she’s actually performing them—she can feel the texture of the vinyl on her hands, the tremor of impact across her legs when she lands a tumble. And then all she has to do is open her eyes and replicate what she saw in the darkness of her own mind.

_“No, you tell. Two kinds of kiss.”_

This, however, is not something she imagined. When Aly opens her eyes, it’s Aliya’s clear, steady gaze that locks on hers. And she’s overcome by an odd feeling inside, something light and hot and kind of terrifying; something that makes her want to close her eyes once more just to feel it all over again.

_“Kiss is different.”_

“Aliya…” She doesn’t sound like herself. That patch of skin on her cheek, only an inch from her mouth, is tingling something fierce like Aliya’s lips were made of fire. “What kind was that?”

Aliya watches her with some nervous intensity that makes Aly wonder if she’s afraid of something—because she’s Aliya Mustafina, who’s fearless and badass, and can’t possibly be afraid of anything. She also can’t be afraid because Aly is afraid—and her question has filled her with enough fear for the both of them.

Mustafina doesn’t take her eyes off her, and now Aly can see that they seem to have changed color, somehow. “I do not know.” There’s a brief pang in her chest, that Aly thinks is going to grow and grow into heartbreak, until Aliya continues, “other kinds do not feel like this.”

Oh…

(Why is she feeling like this? This was nothing… this has to be nothing…)

And that’s when she hears them. Well, she hears something being yelled from some yards away, and it sounds like Russian—she can sort of identify Russian now, what a surprise—and when Aliya’s attention perks towards the sound, Aly turns too, and sees them. Three boys attired completely in red and white; American colors, but Russian colors too. And because Aly pays almost as much attention to men’s gymnastics as she does to women’s, she recognizes them instantly: Emin Garibov, David Belyavskiy and Aleksandr Balandin.

They approach them and Aly glances quickly at Aliya beside her, who purses her lips for a moment before standing up to offer a greeting. Aly follows suit, shaking hands with all three athletes, noticing the strange looks they give them, noticing the raised eyebrows, noticing the way Aliya is shrugging so often as she talks to them. 

If she weren’t so uncomfortable at the idea of being outnumbered 4-1 by Russians who are making no effort to include her in their foreign-language chat, Aly would enjoy this circumstance; she finds that Aliya’s voice makes her heartbeats slower and stronger at the same time. And she’s never heard her carry on a full conversation with Russian, so this is fascinating.

Aly sees Balandin point in her general direction, and then Aliya’s discreet shift on her feet, moving closer to her. Then, just as Aly is thinking whether she shouldn’t just leave this gathering of Russian gymnasts amongst which she obviously does not belong, Aliya turns to her and says, “they congratulate American team on first place result today.”

“Thanks,” she says to the boys immediately, glad to finally be part of the conversation, then smiles and adds, “I mean, spa-see-bwa.”

The boys laugh, obviously impressed, but then Garibov playfully nudges Mustafina, and instantly, like a stirring in the air, Aly notices the girl stiffen. Whatever he said, she didn’t like it. And that’s when Aly decides to leave.

“Can you tell them that I wish them luck in their team finals tomorrow?”

Aly figured Aliya would nod, wave a goodbye or shake her hand, and proceed to stay with the Russians and continue their chat. Instead, she watches the girl turn to her compatriots with a smile that maybe only Aly at that moment can see right through—it’s bitchy and annoyed and might as well come with a snarl. She gives them a few phrases in Russian then motions for Aly to move on back to their lodging, stating simply, “I walk with you to hotel.” And it’s only when they enter the elevator and the doors slide closed that Aliya finally addresses her. “I am very sorry for their comment.”

Aly stares blankly at the Russian girl. So it wasn’t her imagination; something did happen there, didn’t it? “I don’t know what they said,” she tells the Russian girl softly and with a little smile. It seems to remind Mustafina of the language difference.

“Oh yes… they comment that you are very beautiful for American girl.”

For an _American_ girl…

Aly’s jaw slacks slightly, although she wishes she could register no reaction at all, seeing as how Aliya is so intently watching her, gauging her with the sort of anxiety that makes Aly think she’s waiting for her to walk away. She’s not used, however, to hearing a lot of backhanded compliments like this, so her response ends up an uncharacteristically rambled “um… that’s… okay. I guess. It’s their opinion…” Also, she wants to add, they probably only meant it as a joke, and would never had said anything of the sort if they thought Aly would end up having it translated.

The elevator pings its announcement that they’ve arrived on their floor, but Mustafina only takes a couple of steps into the hallway before Aly feels her stop beside her, apparently mulling over something in her thoughts. 

Aly is at loss for what is happening right then; on one hand, it seems that just before the boys showed up, the two of them were discussing something important, and she wishes they could pick up that conversation instead. But Aliya just seems so damn bothered about what the Russian boys said that she can’t help telling her, “You know, I’m not that insulted—”

“They say I make good choice.”

Aly frowns, running that sentence in her mind a few times to make sense of it. A good choice? In what?

Wait…

“Aly?” The two girls turn from each other to the voice at the end of the hallway. Aly swears she hears Aliya let out an impatient sigh, and Aly wonders whether it’s frustration solely because they’re being interrupted yet again, or because the interruption is from McKayla. 

“Hey, I’ll be right there,” Aly calls out, and regrets taking her eyes off Mustafina at all when she turns back and sees that the Russian has taken a step away from her, like a precaution. Aly can’t deny that she understands this move completely—the girl is visibly upset that members of Team Russia are making fun of her, and she doesn’t want Aly to go through the same with her team. But some larger part of her outweighs all those concerns and she sees that she really, honestly, doesn’t care. Let her teammates think whatever they wish.

Of course, by Aliya’s worried glance her way, they’re not on the same page on this. “Boys will tell Russian coaches of us, they will not approve,” the girl explains with a heavy sigh, and now Aly understands the situation fully—it’s not just her teammates, it’s _everyone_ in Russian gymnastics. That’s bad. That’s worse than bad. This being the Olympics, having your own coaches chastise you for befriending the competition (or… you know, taking it a bit further than just befriending) is a recipe for disaster. 

Basically, they can’t talk, or if they do, they have to make damn sure no one sees them. That doesn’t settle well in her, at all. A nauseous feeling makes her breathing shallower. There are so many things to process here—the fact that there’s so much on the line at the Olympics that this whole Mustafina thing could not be a worst-timed development; the fact that she’s gone her entire life thinking she was straight, and yet here is a girl who made a kiss on the cheek hotter than any of the kisses she’s received on the lips; the fact that she really, really can’t imagine going through the rest of the Olympics without talking to Aliya again…

“It is late. We will speak tomorrow,” Aliya says, sounding firm now instead of wholly worried. “Not in front of teammates, of course.”

Oh good… a wave of relief loosens all the muscles that she hadn’t even noticed were terribly tense. Mustafina still wants to talk to her; the threat of her coaches’ looming disapproval didn’t make her run away. “Of course. We won’t be seen together, and we can keep it a secret.” Keeping _what_ a secret, she doesn’t dare name. They haven’t exactly done anything inappropriate (yet?). Something about the way Aliya licks her lips when she nods her agreement makes Aly’s brain shut down and before she’s had any chance of thinking her words over before vocalizing them, she’s already saying, “I won’t be obvious and I’ll try not to stare at you too much.”

Oh. My. God… did she really just say that? By Aliya’s quick, almost imperceptible double-take, yes she did. She just admitted that she needs to actually make an effort not to gawk.

“What is American word for this? Flirting?” Aliya’s amused grin would be cuter if she weren’t making fun of her.

Aly clears her throat, attempts—and fails miserably—to save that slip. “That was… just a comment.”

“No, it is flirting.” The Russian girl nods with certainty, looking quite satisfied with herself in a way that deepens Aly’s blush even more. “I do not know to do flirting in English, so cannot respond to you.” Did she step closer to her? Or did she just imagine it… no, she’s definitely closer. Aly swallows hard. “I teach you Russian. You teach me American flirting.”

Against her better judgment, Aly treats this embarrassing exchange as an actual conversation, telling her matter-of-factly, “I’m not good at flirting or pick-up lines, so I can’t teach it. Unless what I said worked on you, I think I’m pretty terrible at it.”

There’s a wider smile, a more heated look, and then… “it work on me.”

The temperature in the hallway climbs several degrees all of a sudden.

Aly can’t think of anything to say and there’s no hope of focusing on anything else in the world except the large, bright eyes fixed on her, still smiling and almost expectant, daring her for her next move.

But maybe Aly likes dares; an image of Aliya’s kiss earlier bursts in her mind and spreads a tingling warmth from her cheek to the rest of her body. 

Aly grew up being the perennial stable, reliable gymnast, in complete control of her thoughts and movements. Few things ever fazed her and that became her trademark—unfailing consistency. And yet somehow, being within 20 feet of Aliya Mustafina completely undoes her composure and loosens all the discipline that keeps her together—being within 4 inches of her, which is the case now, makes her unable to control her own body. It’s scary and exhilarating at the same time. It makes her favor instinct over reason, and the problem with that is that obviously, those instincts tempt her to do things to Mustafina that… she shouldn’t exactly want to. Like kiss her. In places other than the cheek. (Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.)

“Um, you were right; it is kind of late, and we should go to sleep.” She takes a step closer to the Russian, intending to give her a simple hug and (if her self-control doesn’t fail her) a kiss on the cheek, and is surprised when the girl actually backs into the wall. “You don’t want me to?”

Aliya shakes her head slowly, even if Aly notices that the way she’s staring at her seems to imply that she didn’t want to be farther from her at all. Is she reading her all wrong? 

“I thinking of you often in the day, do not want to dream of you tonight also.”

Aly can’t think. Can’t breathe, either. “Well, I want you to.” And she’s fast—true to the promise she made herself, her lips only meet the warm skin of Aliya’s cheek. It’s so close to the mouth that the tiniest shift in position will mean that all their talk about keeping things undercover is out the window. But then, in the truest exercise of self-restraint that Aly has ever performed, she steps away from the girl, who still stands with her back to the wall, frozen in place. Aly takes a deep, energizing breath, to revive the lungs that Aliya always seems to render useless. “Now we’re even. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” She remembers an earlier part of their conversation and lets out a low laugh. “And by the way, the whole thinking about me thing… sounded a lot like flirting to me.”

Aliya smiles—beams, actually. And Aly’s heart feels like it’s too big to fit inside her chest.

She turns to her room and takes the first few steps, washed by all the different sensations brought upon by the time she spent with Aliya. In theory, those kisses they exchanged shouldn’t mean anything. What determines whether a kiss is romantic or not is the location, right? So why did they mean something, when they should have meant nothing? 

Then, just as she reaches her door, a sudden thought gives her pause, and tugs at the corners of her mouth.

Judging by what has already happened between them, there’s no way to imagine, to fathom, to try to calculate what a real kiss from Aliya Mustafina would be like. The universe would probably implode. The stars would melt and different dimensions would be created out of thin air. And right now, she’d like nothing more than to find out.

She’s smiling at her absurdist thoughts when she opens her door and is met by a room occupied by McKayla and her singularly disapproving glare.

“Really? Of all girls for you to get a crush on at the Olympics, you chose a Russian gymnast?”


	5. Milka

The first time Aliya Mustafina goes shopping in the Olympic Village, all she buys is American merchandise.

————————–

Aliya expected the hour-long reprehension from her team and coaches. Before Alexandr even began the round of lecturing with a stern “we have heard of your friendship with the American captain,” she was already predicting what direction this talk was going in, and checking off a list of concerns they would highlight in order to drive the point home that she’s simply not allowed to see Aly Raisman anymore. So she joins the team in the ice tubs, maintaining a passive expression and hoping that no one will notice how little she believes their theory that “the American is most likely planning to distract you, Aliya; she will use her friendship with you to spy on the Russian team.” The room is silent as the reprehending words echo around the girls, and Aliya can feel a few tense glances being exchanged between her teammates—everyone wants to ask her why, exactly, she would bother spending time with an American rival when all it’ll do is get her in trouble, but the coaches’ approach is less interrogation, and more guilt-tripping speech.

On one hand, she’s thankful that as far as everyone knows, she’s just being naïve, befriending the competition and not knowing any better. But while it’s annoying to be seen as stupid, the alternative is having them find out that the “befriending” part is kind of understatement and that Aly Raisman is sort of the most perfect person that Aliya has ever met.

She purses her lips to hide the smile that naturally invades her face whenever the American girl emerges into her thoughts. It’s difficult—very, very difficult—not to think about her. Aliya has no idea how it happened, that yesterday all they exchanged were hugs, and today just some cheek kisses, and suddenly Raisman is everywhere. The girl’s branded herself into Aliya’s mind and now she has to make a legitimately herculean effort not to ask her coaches to stop, because what they’re doing isn’t working; this lecture isn’t making her want to see Raisman any less, and it isn’t muting Aly’s voice and laughter in her head, and it isn’t erasing the image of that smile that bursts brightly behind her eyelids every time she closes them. No, none of this is serving its purpose and these people are wasting their time.

She nods wordlessly when Alexandr asks her to understand that everything they do is out of concern for her well-being and the success of Team Russia. Then, when afternoon darkens into evening and the girls go to sleep, Aliya wonders with a tug in her heart whether this “thing” with Raisman is going to worsen. Because it seems like it is, without any encouragement at all. Really; it’s not that she actively wants to like the American girl. She doesn’t really mean to smile stupidly when she sees her, and study her face and flirt with her. But it’s easy… and then it just happens. Life in London and the Olympics would be exponentially simpler if she didn’t like her at all.

Maybe she can try to resist Aly next time she sees her. She can maintain her composure and be rational and stop embarrassing herself and getting into trouble. She can get this thing under control. With that determined thought in mind, Aliya finally settles into bed and closes her eyes.

And then goes on to have about five or six dreams about the American girl.

Her only thought at breakfast the next morning is a single miserable mantra: I told her not to kiss me. I told her I was going to dream about her.

“Alka, are you okay?” Masha asks in a gentle mutter just as Vika and Ksenia are joining them, with Anastasia following not too far behind.

Aliya digs into her platter of grains and fruit with what she hopes is an indifferent shrug. “I’m fine.”

“Is it the American? Have you seen her today? Is she trying to talk to you?” Vika is always the most curious, and as she releases her stream of questions, Aliya watches her scan the athletes’ eating area intently, apparently searching for any trace of Raisman or the American team.

“Can we not talk about that today, and just train?” Aliya asks, trying not to sound too moody. The whole subject is annoying her far too much, and that’s what might interfere with her performance—not necessarily Raisman, but all this badgering she’s being subjected to because of their friendship. “Everyone is making a big deal out of nothing.”

Before her temper becomes even more obviously foul, the rest of the team trade looks again and seem to reach a silent agreement that pleases Aliya, as it results in them changing the subject to what they will train today, and how strange the London weather is, and how their leotards for the team finals are much more comfortable than the ones they had to wear yesterday.

Aliya learns that the Russian, Chinese, Australian, and American teams will be sharing the same 4-hour-long timeslots in the training gymnasium at the Olympic Village. Then, while they are on break, the other teams that qualified for the team finals (Romania, Japan, Germany, and Great Britain) will have their turn. So yes, she’s aware that she will be seeing the Americans while her own team trains. While everyone is changing into their training gear, Aliya is mentally bracing herself for when she sees Aly Raisman today, and planning her course of action; she’ll be friendly, but not too friendly. She’ll say hi, and stick to that for the day, and make sure no one sees her anywhere near Raisman. Yes. She can do that. No problem.

Team Russia arrives first, as it’s become their usual. They settle by the beams and begin to stretch, and at first, Aliya watches the door with apprehension, anticipating the moment Raisman walks in with her team. But the Chinese enter the gymnasium, then Australia, and there’s still no sign of the Americans. By then, the Russian team is on the mats, stretching in splits position. Aliya allows herself one moment of distraction from the door, just to turn to Vika and make a comment about tomorrow’s podium training.

That’s when she hears her voice.

“Guys, I think I forgot my ankle tape.”

It rings clear to her, like a million things could have been going on around her—tumbles landing, hands slapping chalk powder, endless chatter—and it’d still stand out to her, and she’d still pick it up amongst everything else, and it would still echo inside her chest and make her swallow hard. She doesn’t want to look up from the mat, but it’s almost like something physically pulls her gaze to the door, and then she actually sees Aly and the lump in her throat grows so much that she thinks she can’t breathe properly anymore.

(This is a problem. The effect this girl has on her is a problem.)

The gym falls into something like silence. Aliya notices it right away; the American and Russian teams cautiously appraising each other… or rather, warily watching Aliya and Raisman, as though monitoring what they’re going to do. Raisman is her usual distracted self, stepping into the gym while simultaneously digging through her backpack. She looks up and it takes her a second or two to figure out the same thing that Aliya did. But then she does what Aliya was hoping she wouldn’t: she smiles. It’s unmistakably directed at her, and it’s bright and lovely and happy, and it makes Aliya almost look away because the knot in her stomach is so tight.

Thankfully, Raisman and the rest of her team carry on with their activities, and Aliya is able to focus back on her resolution: avoid the American at all costs. And she finds out that her own team seems to be conspiring not to let her anywhere near Raisman. Every time it looks like they are walking in each other’s directions (even when they are most likely not) Vika, Afan or Masha immediately find away to summon Aliya to their side, or distract her, or worse—one time, when Aliya approaches a chalk bowl and realizes that Raisman is only a few feet away, with her back to her while watching Maroney vault, Vika and Afan simultaneously appear beside her and begin to chalk up with her, even though Vika had just finished chalking a minute ago and Afan was just about to practice her floor routine.

She’s just getting used to this human shield that her teammates have created to separate her from Raisman, when unexpectedly Aly lands a vault just as Aliya is walking by the landing mat. They’re practically face to face then and a rush of panic makes Aliya freeze in her tracks. Aly raises her hands to salute, but then her attention snaps to Aliya, and her arms fall to her side. Her cheeks are flushed from her recent effort and there are few strands of hair that have fallen from her bun. Aliya thinks she must be really, really well-attuned to the girl’s inner workings because she sees all the different emotions flashing in her eyes; happiness, reluctance, and… warmth. Her heartbeats are languid all of a sudden, waiting and waiting and wanting her to step closer.

(Please don’t smile at me again. Please just stay away. Please…)

Aliya can’t think of anything to say. She’s not even supposed to be standing there, mute and still. But she also can’t pull herself away; she can’t take a step away from the girl because nothing in her allows her to. Nothing in her wants to be away from her; everything is pushing her closer: the eyes, the slightly furrowed brows, the faint smile… and then her voice again, sounding so hesitant and far away.

“Hi, Aliya.”

Aliya swallows hard again, and her mind becomes pleasantly blank. It’s the way she says her name—she just wants to hear it, over and over again. And she responds without meaning to. “I dream with you this night.”

It almost hurts a little bit, how much more strongly her heart beats when Aly lets out a low, embarrassed laugh, a light blush brightening her features. “Really? You did?”

Her voice is almost as faint as Aly’s, but probably more breathless.“Yes. You have blame.”

“I’m sorry; I thought you were joking yesterday.” The girl gives her a beaming smile, and takes a step closer to her that Aliya knows she isn’t entirely conscious of. “I didn’t have any dreams about you, but I was thinking about you a lot.”

How can this sort of ache actually feel good, and be something she’s sure she’s going to crave once they’re far away again?

No. Remember your resolution. “Russian coaches not want me to speak to you. Not want me to see you.”

And then the ache becomes something more akin to pain, when Aly’s smile fades and she bites a corner of her lip with obvious anxiety. “The girls in my team… only one person knew that you and I had gotten close, but she told everyone else yesterday, so it’s not easy on my side either… I’m so sorry if I got you in trouble. We can stay away from each other if you want.”

She doesn’t want that. What she really wants is something she can’t say; it would hurt to admit it out loud. I wish you were closer. I wish I didn’t want you to be closer.

“Aly, do you wanna go through the vault again? Hi, Mustafina.” Maroney is the only other girl in the American team whose voice Aliya has ever heard, so she knows this is the person addressing them before she even turns to acknowledge her and the polite smile she’s offering.

“Hello.” She ponders on calling her by last name too, but that name is very complicated and she’s sure she’s going to mispronounce it. She even mispronounces Raisman’s name, and that one looks easier.

“Um, yeah. Let’s go.” Aly turns back to her, and gives her a smile that’s clearly forced for her benefit. If she wants to reassure Aliya that everything between them is fine, she needs to try a little harder. “Hey, I’ll see you around. Maybe.”

For lack of anything else to do or say, Aliya just nods and watches her walk away, en route back to the starting point of the mat strip. She continues on to the uneven bars area, where she was originally heading, and while she fastens and tightens her hand braces she attempts to shake off the sinking feeling in her stomach that there’s something already going on here between them. There’s some sort of tethering strand binding them and there doesn’t seem to be anything in the world worst than cutting off that strand. And that just can’t be right because this is just a girl she started talking to two days ago. This isn’t supposed to mean anything—she is not supposed to mean anything. But she does, and everything about her does, and why can’t she just get rid of this feeling?

She trains and trains and sweats and curses, and periodically she really, really wants to watch Raisman train as well. Just something to make her smile; take a quick glance, a little peek. But she doesn’t, because she knows that every time she looks at the American girl, her eyes and thoughts and heart linger on her, and that just wouldn’t be acceptable.

Once training is over, Aliya and the rest of her team are given two hours to clean up and change, and if they’d like, explore the shops in the Olympic Village before retiring to bed. Aliya is not particularly looking forward to this outing today. She’s usually enthusiastic about shopping, but her mood is almost apocalyptic by the time they leave the training gymnasium and head to their rooms. She only allows herself to be talked into going out because Vika is so tremendously excited about visiting the international gift shop at the center of the Village.

When they arrive, Aliya notices quickly that the store is indeed grand—it has row after row after row of shelves stocked with products from every nation competing in the Olympics. It seems that the store has been organized in alphabetical order so right at the entrance, the girls let out small squeals of excitement upon seeing mugs from Argentina, postcards from Australia and teddy bears from Azerbaijan. Aliya decides that their enthusiasm is going to wear her thin soon, so she tells everyone that she’ll do a bit of exploring on her own, and takes off with her shopping basket dangling on her arm.

She walks through the store distractedly, taking large strides as an outlet for her impatience. Something is just… off. Her mind isn’t working the way it should. There’s some deep, unsettling dissatisfaction seething inside her, and she knows it’s because of the way things happened with Aly Raisman during training that day.

Stop, Aliya, she berates mentally, taking a shortcut through one of the rows in order to get to the end of the store more quickly. Don’t think about her.

She reaches the end and then barely takes in the countries labeled on top of each row as she begins to walk back to the entrance. Maybe by the time she gets to the beginning, she’ll find that the whole day has been a nightmare from which she hasn’t woken up yet, and that when she opens her eyes, Aly will still be grinning across the gymnasium.

No, stop. Just stop.

Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Get her off your mind.

Yemen, Yugoslavia.

Aly Raisman, Aly Raisman. Alyraisman…

Venezuela, Vietnam.

“I was thinking about you a lot.”

Uganda. Ukraine.

“Hi, Aliya.”

United States.

Aliya freezes in front of the American section. It’s a larger country than most, so their row is significantly longer than what she’s seen for the other nations. She stands in the middle of the empty aisle, eyes sweeping the products on display with a mixture of trepidation and exhilaration. Before she even registers the action, her hand reaches for a package of what looks like biscuits. She examines the letters carefully, turning the plastic over on her hand and trying to understand what the tagline means. She wonders whether Aly eats these biscuits—or “cookies” according to the label. She places the package inside her basket, then smiles when she sees the soda section. It’s easy to spot the bottle identical to the one Aly shared with her yesterday (the blandest, most tasteless drink she’s ever tried). She places a bottle of that inside her basket, too.

It’s only after she’s already impulsively grabbed a dozen products from the American section that Aliya starts to wonder why, exactly, this is cheering her up. The answer is obvious, but of course she doesn’t want her mind to linger on Aly. She shifts her thoughts to how her teammates will react when they see her buy a basketful of foods and souvenirs from the enemy country. Maybe she should try to check out the Russian section, and buy some things from there, too, just so they won’t be able to make fun of her.

For the first time since she left the gymnasium, Aliya feels something close to happiness. Even as she makes her way from row to row, she glances periodically at her basket and can’t help grinning. She likes American things, suddenly, because she likes an American girl. That’s the simpler truth underneath all the layers of second-guessing herself and feeling guilty for associating with the competition.

She rounds off a corner after spotting a sign for the Rwandan section, but she doesn’t make it two steps into that aisle when a truly surprising sight kicks the breath from her lungs and all the thoughts from her head. If she had any air left in her, she would gasp.

Bozhe moy…*

All that talk about staying away from her, about not getting addicted (because addictions aren’t good)… all that talk about getting things under control, and she was already withdrawing. All that talk and the only thing her body seems to need nowadays is to be close to her. All that talk…

And there she is.

————————

For the hundredth time since she landed in London, Aly wishes she spoke Russian. There’s the obvious advantage of being able to communicate a little better with Aliya—not that the girl wants to talk to her, judging from what happened at the training gymnasium—but she’d also be able to understand what the hell are the ingredients in the Xtra-Sitr drink that she had shared with Aliya yesterday. It tasted a lot like overly-sweetened root beer, but there was also some apple juice, she thinks, and what tasted back then like really horrible coffee. She’s studying the bottle in her hands, concentrating on the letters but also kind of laughing at herself because no matter how long she stares at this label, the writing isn’t going to start making sense.

“Have you really been hanging out with Aliya Mustafina?”

“I just… I get along with her really well, that’s all.”

“You’re Aly Raisman. You get along with everybody.”

She wants to buy this soda. It tastes like the most foul drink in the universe, but because this is what Aliya Mustafina likes, she wants to drink it too. And it’s ridiculous, yes, but standing in this deserted aisle in the international shop while staring at Russian merchandise is the only thing that’s managed to brighten her day.

Releasing a small, sad sigh, Aly gently places the plastic bottle inside her half-filled basket and turns to the end of the aisle. And that’s when she thinks, I shouldn’t have turned.

She almost drops her basket. Aliya is standing only about a yard away, watching her with the large, soulful eyes that Aly’s begun to associate with teasing grins and laughter and that sensation in the pit of her stomach—the one she’s feeling right now—that someone’s knocked her over and she’s sort of free-falling from very, very high up. No one’s going to catch her.

“I dream with you this night.”

“Privet.” It’s not the foreign word that tips off Aly that the Russian girl must be at least somewhat nervous. It’s the tone, and the discreet shift from one foot to another.

“You haven’t taught me that word yet.” She doesn’t mean to whisper, but part of her still fears that someone is going to walk into this aisle and the little world Aliya seem to create for her whenever they’re near is going to explode, and the shards will dig into her. “Is that ‘hello’?”

Aliya nods, then her gaze falls to the basket that Aly had almost forgotten she was holding, and she almost cringes, and feels a furious blush warm her cheeks immediately. Of course she had to be caught buying a basketful of random Russian things that she can’t even properly identify. She’s about to ask Aliya what she’s buying, just to draw attention to anything other than her embarrassment, when she can’t help glancing at the girl’s basket, too. Just like that, her heart bursts into a flutter and her lips curve into a smile.

“I thought you didn’t like that soda.”

It’s Aliya’s turn to blush and shuffle on her feet and look at her basket with a wince, and Aly keeps herself together even when she thinks she might start feeling light-headed. They exchange guilty looks, like partners in this horrible, hilarious crime of shopping to feel closer together.

“There is the bad Russian drink in your hand also.” The bashful grin she gives her makes her start forgetting all about how dangerous it is to sink into these waters again—she’s going to drown in the hazel eyes and the perfect mouth and nothing is going to save her, and yet she’ll still be smiling like this, like the whole world is right again. “And you pick wrong chocolate.”

“This one is bad?”

“Da.” A step forward, a hand outstretched to grab a small purple wrapper from the shelf beside Aly… she’s getting closer. Aly stands her ground. “This is best chocolate. Milka.”

“That’s chocolate? This one with the little cow on it? I thought that was beef jerky… um, dried meat.” That makes Aliya chuckle, and watch her with… amusement? Fondness? Her body’s automatic response to that, as always, is something that makes her uncomfortable; her heart starts melting inside her chest and all the assorted feelings she has for the girl start to evaporate into her bloodstream. “You know, I really wanted to talk to you more today.” She almost regrets broaching this subject, because nothing seems worse right now than having to see Aliya’s smile disappear, but she just has to get this off her chest before it festers inside her. She sets her basket down onto the floor and continues with a sigh. “I almost did. I wanted to, all day, pretty much. But I didn’t want to get you in trouble again.”

But Aliya’s smile doesn’t disappear. It widens, and makes Aly’s chest tighten. “I want to talk to you also. Today I want to look at you very much but could not.” She takes another step forward, setting down her basket as well, and the smile remains just as bright and breathtaking. “Want to look because you are very beautiful, but coaches always see me, and American team not like me.”

It’s hard for her not to sway on her feet at the compliment, and such is the violent flutter in her chest that she almost forgets about the comment on her team. “They don’t dislike you. They think I like you too much.”

Aliya’s gaze locks with her own in a different way, and changes the world around them, like it bends and blurs suddenly.Among all the thousand remarkable things about Mustafina, the most obvious—the one you notice right away and the one that enslaves you immediately—are the eyes. Of course Aly had thought about them before. She’d been distracted by them plenty of times. But they’ve never been fixed on her like this, and that’s what she doesn’t know how to react to.

“Yes, Russian team believing the same of me. I believe it is correct.”

Aly doesn’t realize she’s barely breathing until Aliya’s smiling response, and a single frail, solitary thought whispers in her mind that she can be relieved now; she’s not alone in this. This little world she was starting to think was all imagined is actually real.

“Is your team here in the store?”

“Yes. I believe will be near soon.”

Aly takes a deeper breath than necessary, bracing herself. “Okay, then let me at least give you a hug before they get here.” She doesn’t give Aliya any time to react before her arms are wrapped tightly around the girl’s frame. It’s not supposed to be a long hug. In her mind, they should do this before the rest of Team Russia forces them to flee in different directions. It’s not supposed to be anything special.

Aly feels the girl embrace her back warmly, and can almost sense that she’s smiling. Because of the 2 inch height difference, her chin rests comfortably on Aliya’s shoulder. It’s when she takes a small breath and inhales the girl’s scent that she regrets hugging her at all; especially when she’s already so, so attracted to her, especially when she already likes her so much, especially when she already knows how much she wanted to be close to her. Because this isn’t going to be enough, she can tell. All Aliya did was kiss her cheek yesterday and the high she got off that still hasn’t worn off completely, and what remains of it flares alive again, pushing her to get more. This is what she had feared before: her brain is shutting down.

It’s that feeling, swirling in her gut and rampaging in her mind that makes her turn her head slightly and press a slow, heated kiss on Aliya’s neck, just below the jugular. She feels the girl let out a heavy breath, then swallow hard. Aly kisses her again, just as slowly and on the same spot, and almost smiles when Aliya shifts closer to her. It’s only a tiny step, as they were already hugging after all, but that small shift means the entire expanse of their torsos are now touching and it takes a second for Aly to recover from the sensation. She thinks she’s light-headed, but it’s hard to be sure at the time. Until Aliya murmurs, “up,” and then she’s sure that yes, she is indeed light-headed—Aliya wants her to kiss her higher. Like… the face. She kisses her jaw, and hears the same murmur again, “up.”

Up. She’s floating.

She kisses her cheek, the same place she kissed before—as far and as close to the mouth as yesterday. She’s unsure of what will happen if she does get to her mouth, as it seems that her entire body has stopped working and they haven’t even kissed properly yet.

“Up…”

The whisper—all she needs to hear to think that yes, she’s definitely going for the mouth this time and the world is going to implode. But then, the sound of footsteps in the next row—and that’s all she needs, in turn, to do nothing of that sort.

She shifts her body only a bit, preparing to step away because she thinks those footsteps are most likely approaching them. But Aliya seems to detect her intention, and instead of urging Aly to go higher, as she had been whispering before, she’s the one who angles her head a little lower, just low enough. Aliya mutters breathlessly, “nyet,” and she’s the one who finally, at last, presses their lips together.


	6. Pieces of Reese's

Aliya isn’t sure, exactly, of what makes her do it. In fact, what she’s done doesn’t sink in until later (when her eyes meet Aly’s eyes and a hundred words are exchanged in silence). In the immediacy of that one moment when Aly’s breath is warm against her neck and it seems like she’s sprouted a thousand extra nerve endings, Aliya’s mind is overtaken by a strange, foreign thought—the realization that being away from this girl would actually _hurt_ , and it wouldn’t be the pain she’s used to and knows how to negotiate with, the one on her knee and muscles and joints; the ones she can medicate. No, this one will be different and it’s not something she can try to create immunity to.

And that’s what makes her panic; that’s what makes her mumble, “nyet”—and if she were any other person, she would be pleading, and not just saying it—and lean towards Aly and lose track of where they are and who she is and how she is supposed to be acting. And no, it doesn’t sink in immediately that she’s doing what she’s doing. It doesn’t sink in when she feels her lips make contact with Aly’s, or when she feels Aly’s breath hitch, or even when she feels the girl’s warm hand rest gently on her cheek. It really only sinks in when the girl steps away a second later and looks at Aliya with a distant, unreadable frown. And then Aliya comprehends, sort of, the scope of what she just did. They were friends, perhaps. And now, it seems they are something else.

“You shouldn’t have kissed me.” The words are simple, so of course Aliya understands them. But she wishes she doesn’t. 

Did she do something wrong? Maybe she didn’t want it? Maybe she didn’t like it…

But Aly doesn’t take her eyes off her; she purses her lips and allows the tiniest smile to creep into her perfect, _perfect_ face, and then adds in an even quieter murmur, “now I want to kiss you, so badly…” There’s a shift in her gaze; her voice lowers to a whisper, and Aliya faintly registers the footsteps approaching them. The world is suspended, holding its breath with her, wanting to smile with her; “but two of my teammates are coming up behind you.” Aliya uses most of her strength to tear her eyes away from Aly and look over her shoulder, and her remaining strength to control her urge to throw Jordyn Wieber and McKayla Maroney the bitchiest glare she can manage. But then Aly speaks up again, and Aliya doesn’t need to see the girl to hear the elation in her voice. The tight squeeze in her chest makes her smile, too. “So I guess you’re going to have to meet me in the ice room later.”

The first time Aliya Mustafina kisses Aly Raisman, all it does is make her look forward to the second time.

——————-

There’s silence when Aly follows McKayla into the room they share. On the way here, Aly occasionally caught herself on the verge of breaking into what would no doubt look like a stupid and nonsensical smile. If she could tell her own brain to calm down with all the squealing thoughts about Aliya, and tell her stomach to stop the excited flip-flopping, and tell her heart to _slow down_ _for crying out loud_ , she would do it. But she can’t, so the result is this: McKayla turning to her with a disapproving, resentful glare, and her not caring in the least. 

“You bought some really interesting stuff from the store.”

“Yeah. Want some Russian cookies?”

The resentment leaves, in part, and is replaced by what seems to Aly like a mixture of disbelief and disappointment, and maybe even some toned-down revulsion. “I can’t believe you couldn’t stay away from her for two hours.”

Aly shrugs—which is such an Aliya thing to do that she almost smiles then, too. “I didn’t actually plan to bump into her, you know. I didn’t know she was going to be there. I barely said hi to her during training today.”

It’s McKayla’s scoff that tips off Aly that maybe she isn’t crediting this conversation with as much seriousness as it’s warranting at the moment. “If by ‘barely said hi’ you mean 'flirted shamelessly’ then I agree with you.”

This is when Aly’s mind is split into two factions; the half that will lie to McKayla in order to preserve the harmony of their friendship, and the half that will deal with all the Aliya Mustafina feelings rushing in her bloodstream. 

“I didn’t flirt with her, Mack.”

(Yes, I did. And it really was shameless.)

“Not only that, Aly; you two were checking each other out the whole time.”

(Have you _seen_ her? Who wouldn’t check her out?)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And come on—at the store, you guys were like, so close. It could have looked like you were making out if someone saw you from the wrong angle.”

Aly’s heart chooses that moment to perform a somersault inside her chest, and she winces a bit. This is bad timing to replay that kiss in her mind. It’s bad timing to feel breathless and weak, and warm inside, like there’s some sort of small candle that’s been kindled inside her gut and melts her heart every time Aliya surfaces in her thoughts… which is frequently. 

She purses her lips and swears she can taste Aliya’s neck again.

Oh, no; she’s losing this fight; she’s going to say things she shouldn’t (she’s really perfect, Mack, you don’t understand what it’s like to be close to her).

“I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“I just don’t understand how you can get so close to someone who is in the rival team, and who’s actually your direct competition in both the AA and the floor finals. And she’s just… I mean, come on Aly, she walks around the arena like her leo is armor.”

—————–

“You and the American again. Alexandr is not going to approve.”

“We had a short conversation, Masha. Nothing serious. I didn’t think she was going to be there.”

“Vika, are you going through her shopping bag?”

"Why did you buy so many things from the American section? What is Reese’s Pieces?”

————————

“Mack, I swear I barely see her. I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this.”

“I don’t buy it, Aly. I think every time one of us loses sight of you, you’re off sneaking around with the competition.”

———————-

“This mug that says, 'Kiss Me, I’m American’… this is an American joke?”

——————-

“And why the hell did you buy so much Russian merchandise? You can’t even read what this says. Is this cow meat packaged like a candy?”

“No, that’s… Milka. That’s chocolate.” 

Aly takes it from the table upon which McKayla is setting all the products that were inside her shopping bag for scrutiny. She examines it in her hand, tuning out her friend’s comments on each item. Opening the wrapper, she breaks off a piece of the chocolate bar and pops it into her mouth with a barely contained smile. It really is good; it melts inside her mouth quickly, and has a strong but smooth taste. No wonder it’s Aliya’s favorite.

It’s earlier than their scheduled time, but there’s an irrational part of her that wants to leave the room immediately and go meet Aliya; maybe the universe will favor her today, it will weigh her heart and see how heavy it is with the need to see her–maybe it’ll speed up time for her.

“You know, I just remembered I have to get something from the vending room.”

“Let me guess. Ice?”

——————-

“Masha, I’m going to take a walk.”

“You are going to meet the American. You don’t need to lie to me. If you give me the Pieces of Reese’s, then I will not tell the others.”

“Deal.”

——————–

It’s almost half past 8pm, and according to Marta, 9pm was the absolute latest Team USA could go to bed at on the night before the team finals. Aly paces a corner of the vending room slowly, taking in the low hum of the machines, and noticing the pattern of the marble floor. Thirty minutes is not much time to spend with Aliya; it’s nowhere near sufficient, but it would be so much worse if they couldn’t see each other at all. 

And then she has to ponder on the larger picture, on what lies underneath this urgency she feels to be with the Russian girl all the time. It borders on something she doesn’t know the name of, and doesn’t know how to describe, and if Aly weren’t so naturally cool-headed, this would make her panic.

She pauses in front of a machine, then turns slightly and absent-mindedly leans her shoulder against it, and begins to examine a large, stylized map of London that hangs quite obviously on the wall. She’s never noticed this poster before. But then, she never notices anything when Aliya is around.

She cocks her head distractedly, eyes trying to follow the path of the city’s major streets, then notices movement out of the corner of her line of sight. When she turns her head, a smirking Aliya in loose hair and non-athletic attire make the beating heart inside her burst into an almost painful gallop. It takes that sort of nearly overwhelming physical response for her to acknowledge that yes, her body really likes Aliya.

“Hey,” she greets, and maybe it’s just her, but does she sound a little breathless? “How long have you been standing there?”

“Not very long time.” Aliya steps inside the room and stands beside her, looking at the same map Aly had been studying before. She’s not sure whether Aliya did this on purpose, but their arms are almost touching and it’s just _so_ distracting. “American team is mad because of today?”

Her brain is still processing the fact that they’re that close, so Aly has to shake her head a bit, to clear her thoughts. “No… I mean, one of them is, kind of.”

“Maroney?”

Did she actually shift closer to her? How in the world is she supposed to have a clear-headed conversation with Aliya when she can now feel the heat of the girl’s skin against hers?

It takes all her brain capacity not to stutter. “Um… yes. How did you know?”

“I believe she like you.” Aliya doesn’t take her eyes off the poster, but Aly can’t stop staring at the flawless face—looking away is _impossible_ —and that’s how she notices the light blush, and figures out with a growing smile that yes, this is planned. Aliya is moving closer to her, and distracting her, on purpose. She’s probably even getting a kick out of seeing her this flustered.

Well! Two can play this game.

Aly turns her body so that it more directly faces Aliya’s. She leans forward just a little bit, so her torso is almost in contact with the girl’s arm, and she pretends to be looking at the same poster. A small rush of victory makes its way through her when she notices Aliya tense. “Really? I don’t think she does. I think you might be a little jealous.”

Aliya wants to smile; Aly can see it. Instead of giving in, however, she turns her body completely, pitting them face-to-face. Aly drown in the girl’s magnetic gaze and her heart seems to slam against her throat. She momentarily forgets all about her plan, because the last time they were this close, Aly didn’t breathe and didn’t think. The last time they were this close, the whole world was hazel eyes and soft lips and a warm cheek. The last time they were this close was the first time they kissed. “I, not jealous. Maroney jealous.”

There’s only a tiny part of her brain that is still sane and clear and willing to keep on fighting, and that’s the one that speaks up with a light retort: “if you’re right and she likes me, then I guess I should tell her I already like someone.”

Aliya’s beaming, teasing grin sends a pleasant shiver down her body, making her skin tingle and burn from the inside. This is so easy. Being with Aliya is so, so easy; it’s almost alarming. “This someone you like… Russian girl?”

“Yeah. I think you might even know her.”

“Oh, she is gymnast?”

They’re so close, her body is bracing itself and her stomach is contorting with anticipation and Aly wonders how she’s still _standing_.

“Yes, she is. She’s a great gymnast.”

“This girl, she like you too?”

Aly licks her lips, remembers in a flash what Aliya tasted like, and relaxes into a smile to match Aliya’s, which has brightened to such an extent that Aly’s sure every other smile she ever sees in her life after this won’t compare. “I don’t know… she kissed me earlier today but I haven’t had a chance to kiss her back.”

“I am certain, Russian girl want you to kiss back now.”

Her lungs might fail her, her legs might fail her, but it won’t be important. Nothing is important in that moment but this. “Good. I don’t think I could wait any longer.”  

When it happens, when she finally leans into her and feels everything in the world making sense, it’s like a quick rush of blood to her head, a fast-settling tremor in her chest, and the awareness that something inside of her is shifting, breaking down and coming back together at the same time.  Then when she feels hands on her waist and a tongue sliding against her own, the tiny trace of worry she still had traveling in her blood dissolves quickly amid the intoxicating happiness pumping through her veins.

Gymnasts are some of the best-conditioned athletes in the world. But they still run out of air. When it happens to them, Aliya breaks the kiss and lowers her lips to Aly’s neck, mirroring what Aly had done before in the international store. Aly barely catches her breath before she’s raising Aliya’s chin gently to kiss her again.

Later, when lips are swollen and it’s kind of past their bedtime (but not too much past it—they’re still responsible girls) Aliya drops her off in front of her room and kisses her again and tells her that she has to admit something: Aly was right and she was bit jealous of “Maroonee.” Aly has to chuckle and allows herself a few seconds to appreciate the twisting, coiling sensation in her chest, before telling her that that Russian girl she mentioned before is the _only_ person she likes—she didn’t leave room for anyone else. And then, as though to make sure Aly is going to dream about her, Aliya remarks as she’s making her way down the hallway and to her own room, that she hopes Aly liked the Milka chocolate bar… because that’s what their kisses tonight tasted like. 


	7. Pretty. Bad. Ass. (Part 1)

The teams in competition this morning are lined up in a particular pattern, to facilitate the customary hand-shaking before the grand entrance to the arena. There are two lines of athletes, who shuffle along as they greet their competitors with excitement and trepidation and nervousness. It’s impossible not to sense it in the air, and it’s reflected in every athlete’s eyes: something truly life-changing is about to take place inside that arena.

There is, however, something that distracts Aly from the enormity of today’s event, and that happens to be a Russian gymnast with whom Aly will be shaking hands in approximately twenty seconds. Team USA has just passed China’s line, and now they’re approaching Romania’s while the Russian Federation’s is next, and Aly can’t help feeling a little breathless at the mere thought of _touching_ Aliya. Yes, it’s been about ten hours since they last saw each other, but ten hours might as well be eternity when every other thought her brain produces revolves around her. Aly repeats the words in her head, over and over again—don’t be obvious; shake her hand, then move on.

She’s afraid of attempting to greet Aliya because, God forbid, she might flirt with her unintentionally, or otherwise compromise them. Aliya’s made clear that the very worst thing that can happen to them is for the Russian coaches to find out about their involvement, after they already reprehended Aliya for it—that sort of insubordination is costly in the authoritative structure of the Russian gymnastics team.

Aly also doesn’t want to look far into the line and see Aliya ahead of time, for fear that she won’t be able to tear her eyes away and won’t pay attention to the athletes in front of her, and will consequently be known as that rude American who didn’t shake people’s hands properly. She also has a tiny, ridiculous fear in the back of her mind that someone will ask her a completely innocent question about the weather or her leotard, and her brain will malfunction and she’ll blurt out, “Aliya Mustafina and I were totally not making out yesterday in the vending room. Totally not.”

Aly clears her throat then, to wipe from her mind that particularly horrifying and embarrassing scenario, and focuses back on her original objective: shake Aliya’s hand, and in the process of doing so, manage not to broadcast to the world that they like each other.

Their respective teams finally intersect, and Aly doesn’t realize she held her breath while shaking Paseka’s and Komova’s hands until she reaches Aliya, and their eyes collide and lock and cause a quake inside her chest, and even when she finally exhales—because God, she had been withdrawing from Aliya and hadn’t even noticed—the aftershocks of their brief contact burn her skin and change her heart rate. The Russian girl looks at her steadily, warmly, apparently unaware that she’s making Aly’s head swim. It worsens when Aliya doesn’t release her hand for a second or two, leaning her head to the side by the tiniest of degrees, almost smiling. Aly feels something close to panic; she’s falling apart and staring and people are going to notice, _people are going to notice_ … amid these urgent thoughts she blurts out in a very low mutter, without meaning to, “can you meet me in the locker room?”

Aliya widens her eyes just slightly, then slowly lets her hand go and offers her a grin and a nod. Aly makes it to the end of the line without tripping or losing track of her words—which is miraculous—and then tells Kyla (the only person who won’t offer to go with her) that she needs to adjust her leotard in the locker room beside the waiting area. She enters the expansive locker room and her eyes snap to the large clock hung on the wall.

Crap. They have just under two minutes before the Olympics personnel come in to announce the time warning and usher all athletes into their lineups for the entrance at the Arena.

“Aly?”

At the sound of Aliya’s whispered call, Aly surreptitiously emerges from her hiding place, grabs Aliya’s hand, and pulls her behind a large row of lockers. She planned on giving the Russian girl a second or two to recover from what must have caused a fleeting sensation that she was being kidnapped, but instead, she finds herself immediately wrapped inside a tight, utterly heart-stopping embrace that sends all her senses into overdrive and makes her wonder whether her body is ever going to get used to being close to Aliya.

It sends a wave of aching longing through her, when she has to back away from the girl and glance at the clock again. One minute, thirty seconds.

“I thinking when first saw you, you are very beautiful even in American jacket,” Aliya jokes smilingly, and Aly tries not to get overwhelmed by this, or caught up in the sparkling eyes and the smile originating from a mouth she hasn’t kissed enough, because if she does, then she’s going to lose track of time.

She can’t tell Aliya the stronger truth right now (I know I just saw you less than 24 hours ago but I missed you _so much_ ), so she settles for talking about a lesser truth, something composed of words she can say without laying her heart down. “Okay, I think we have like… a minute before the Olympics people come in to check whether there’s anyone in here,” she whispers hurriedly, watching Aliya also glance at the clock with a frown. “I just wanna say that you’re an awesome competitor, and I genuinely wish you luck, and I wanted you to know that I think you’ll do great and that your team will also do really well, and that even though we’re competing against each other, I still hope that you—”

“Aly,” the Russian girl tries to interject—and Aly notices for the first time that she’s kind of staring at her mouth, and it makes her lick her lips nervously—but Aly plows on, before they run out of time and she doesn’t get the chance to make Aliya understand what she means.

“—are really great, as you usually are, because to tell you the truth I think you’re like, the best gymnast in that team and obviously one of the best in the world, but the point I’m making is that this is an important competition, and I like you a lot, so I want you to do well, regardless of—”

Aliya takes another impatient look at the clock, and Aly only has time for a faint, transient thought that disappears as quickly as it courses through her—that if Aliya weren’t in her mind, then the Olympics could have been consuming her whole and that would have been awful—before Aliya cuts off her rambling with her own lips, steady and sure against hers. Her back meets the metal locker behind her with a small clang, and then there’s nothing for her to do but respond in equal measure, like this breathless desperation can go away if she just kisses it away, like it’s okay for Aliya to pull her breath from her and not let her regain it. Even when it starts getting too deep, and too reckless, and she’s less and less sure of whether she’s really off-balance and falling or it’s just her gut playing tricks on her, she’s not the one who breaks it off. Even when her disoriented hand ends up accidentally grabbing and lowering the zipper on Aliya’s Russian Federation jacket, she’s not the one who breaks the kiss off.

Aliya is the one who does. And then she purses her lips and steals a peek at the clock before shooting her the most beautifully self-pleased grin Aly’s ever seen. “Sorry. I wait long time to do that and feel much better now.”

(They have thirty seconds.)

Aliya continues, slower than her usual, like her words are heavier and she wants to say the right things. “I root for you also. Not American team. But you. You are great, great gymnast. Hope you do very well. Perfect.” A sly smile, like it’s a smirk she’s trying to hide, and a little taunt that warms Aly’s cheeks; “and Russia team will win, but hope you also are on podium. And later today, I give you permission to take off jacket.”

She honestly didn’t think that being pressed up against a locker while the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen kissed the living daylights out of her would make her less nervous about the Olympics, but that’s what happens. Suddenly, Aly, whose nerves were positively coiled into distortion just a heartbeat ago, feels her thoughts begin to shift into place, and her blood rushes a little slower inside her veins. Distractions from the sport are generally terrible, but she thinks she’s finally found one that’s good. And now she can smile at the way her heart seizes when she catches sight of Aliya’s smirk, and she can take a deep breath and enjoy how much she wants to reach out and touch Aliya, just for a few seconds.

(They have fifteen seconds.)

“First of all, the US team is getting the gold, but you Russians can have the silver.” She lets one of her hands swing beside her, and it brushes against Aliya’s, and right then, Aly can feel the Russian girl fill the space between her spine and her heart. When the hand swings back in that direction, Aliya grasps it in her own for a long, hazy moment.

(Ten seconds.)

Then Aly whispers, aware of how warm she feels, all over, when a grinning Aliya leans forward to hear her better. “Second, next time you kiss me like that, we better be in a private place, and it better last longer than that.” The same hand that lowered the zipper is the one she uses to close the girl’s jacket back up again. Aliya holds that hand in place, pressed against the area of her collarbone just below her neck. “And yes, I will take off your jacket later tonight.”

This is the first time Aly Raisman makes a promise that she ends up not keeping.

—————

Few things are more annoying to Aliya than post-competition interviews and press conferences. The one that occurs after the team finals isn’t going to be any less aggravating. While her team prepares for it and they wait for seating inside the conference room, she and Ksenia sit together on the carpeted floor, alternating their attention from their recently-awarded silver medals, to their coaches’ continuing examination of the team finals, to Vika, Masha, and Anastasia’s own musings on the competition.

Silence settles between them, brought on by exhaustion and the anticipation of an endless stream of pointless questions, and Aliya closes her eyes and leans her head back onto the wall, raising a hand to touch the zipper on her jacket. An assortment of images of Aly Raisman surfaces in her mind, and it’s because of an aching, pulsing wish to have the American girl nearby that Aliya sighs, pondering if it’s worse to think about her all the time, or not to think about her at all.

“I heard about you and the American girl yesterday.“ Ksenia’s voice is so quiet that Aliya almost mistakes it for a thought, but the way it’s kind of worried and serious assures her that it isn’t. And there’s something about the care in her tone that makes Aliya wonder whether the older girl is speaking as the team captain, or her friend.

“I gave Masha my American chocolate so she would keep it a secret,” Aliya tells her drily, causing her teammate to break into a small smile. A few moments of silence pass again, and then Ksenia finally asks the question.

"You’re not worried? About losing focus?”

“No. I focus better when I’m happy.”

She’s saying a lot, she knows it. That sentence has so many layers that it’s hard to navigate through them all, and she’s glad she was able to conjure the right words, in order to say so much with so little.

Ksenia takes a second to give her a reaction, which turns out to be a simple, understanding nod. Then she looks down at the medal on her lap, tracing the contours of the silver with her fingers, and says gently, “she’s very pretty. The nicest one of that whole team, too. I can see why you’d like her. And she really likes you, it seems.“

Her words send a wave of happiness and something similar to relief to sweep through Aliya’s body and cause her chest to expand again, when it was starting to feel so constricted. “Really? You think so?”

“She’s just so obvious,” Ksenia chuckles, and now their eyes meet with the warmth of a shared joke. “She always hugs you first. After they found out they had gotten gold, she was the only American who came over to us. And then when we were on the podium, she made sure you were the first one she talked to… also, I caught her watching you many times today.”

She could replay in her mind each moment she shared with Aly, over and over again, and the same weightless feeling would pull the corners of her mouth and overwhelm her with this unique brand of happy agitation that she hadn’t even known existed before Aly asked her how to say “ice.”

"Aliya.” Ksenia is being careful now, probably choosing her words, and she braces herself for something that she can predict she won’t like. “What about after? After the Olympics?”

Aliya has always been honest and blunt, but this is the first time she’s afraid of being these things, because it means admitting thoughts and feelings that threaten her sense of self-preservation. “I don’t know what will happen after.”

They’re quiet again, and Aliya runs the zipper of her jacket up and down, like Aly did earlier that day; it steadies her heart. There’s a lot she hasn’t allowed herself to think about, and most of it involves the American girl. Even now, she feels the temptation to brave that corner of her mind that’s been so troubled lately by a sensation she never really feels in competition: uncertainty. For now, she muses with a sad slump of her shoulders, she can postpone those thoughts, and shift her attention to something more immediate.

“Are you going to tell the coaches?”

Her teammate seems surprised by the question, and a speck of unease starts to shred a corner of Aliya’s heart. “Tell them? They already know.”

————————

Once everyone is past the celebratory squealing and crying and the jumping up and down, most of Team USA is tired. Aly certainly is; her feet start to drag while she paces the waiting area, and she no longer wants to hug anyone because that would entail lifting her arms. She tells herself that all she needs is to get through the next two hours, with the press conference and the final photo shoots. Once that’s over, then the things that her body craves at the moment—Aliya, sleep, and food—will be her reality back at the hotel.

She joins her teammates at the other corner of the room, where everyone is gathered around Nastia as she tells them a story about the time she lost one of her medals inside her car and thought her dog had eaten it. A round of hearty giggles and chuckles vibrates the surroundings, and Aly is easily infected by their cheer. She relaxes into the easy atmosphere, and feels her tense body shake loose some of its lingering adrenaline. That’s why she almost misses Nastia’s teasing comment.

“Hey Aly, I have something funny to tell you.” Aly nods along, smiling already in expectation of laughter because Nastia’s sense of humor matches hers so well. “I think Aliya Mustafina has a crush on you.”

Aly feels herself paling a bit.

The blond girl probably doesn’t pick up all the discreet signs that everyone around her has sort of stiffened, and she continues with another laugh, “she didn’t take her _eyes_ off you during both your routines. I thought that was hilarious!”

Breathe. Try to laugh too. “Right; that would be hilarious.”

Kyla, Aly decides, has the worst fake laugh. Everyone else puts up decent efforts in order to dispel the awkwardness that threatens to loom over the group after Nastia’s observation, but Aly has to exchange a look with McKayla, the one who knows that she hasn’t exactly stopped seeing Aliya after everyone kind of asked her to. The girl shakes her head just slightly, like a tilting of the head, and Aly understands the instructions immediately—act natural, because you aren’t right now.

“Can you imagine? Her coaches would kill her.”

Aly stops trying to act natural.

Later, when she and McKayla are standing by the entrance to the conference room, apart from the rest of the group and only minutes away from the interviews, Aly senses a miniscule shift in the air, which she doesn’t have time to examine or prepare herself for, before she’s hearing McKayla remark lightly, “so I guess even outsiders have noticed your thing with Mustafina.”

It’s not meant to start an argument. That, she can tell. McKayla wants to discuss this for reasons that Aly guesses have to do with her resentment that clearly, something is going on with Aly and another girl, and she has not made any attempt to talk to her best friend about it. And Aly understands, she really does; she’d feel the same way if McKayla shut her out of any exciting news.

And this is definitely news.

“I guess so.” What else can she say about this, that won’t feel silly or too private? “I hope not too many people notice.”

“Believe me, people are noticing. I bet you that after all this, people are going to dissect every recorded second of your Olympic experience and at least _someone_ will pick up this whole Mustafina thing.”

Aly swallows hard. This can’t be noticeable. The Russians—they can’t notice. They just can’t.

“You know why this is so weird for me, as your friend?” When Aly lifts her gaze from the medal on her chest to McKayla, she finds the girl studying her with a slight squint. “The last person you dated was, first of all, a guy. He was also your neighbor, and he played soccer. As opposed to a girl, who lives in Russia, and competes against you.” A response is expected, apparently, but Aly doesn’t give her one, because it’s more than a little difficult to have all her thoughts and worries and fears put into words like this. “I just don’t want you start something that isn’t going anywhere, you know?”

(I know.)

————–

The one time they cross paths after the press conference, Aliya’s eyes flicker to her but are just as quick to look somewhere else. And Aly, who thought that the right thing to do would be to step away and stop complicating the girl’s life, decides that she, too, can look away and pretend things are all right.

Things are definitely not all right.

She doesn’t sleep well that night, of course. The next day, when the all-around contenders practice at the training gymnasium, it doesn’t seem to matter how far away they are from each other—Aly is at the vaults, Aliya is on floor—they’re much too close. Anything resembling proximity seems to burn Aly’s skin and it starts to show in everything she does; her landings are subpar, her timing on vault is off, her bars are even worse than usual, and halfway through what feels like her 400th beam practice, she hops off the apparatus and leans against another beam nearby, closing her eyes, and trying to tame her shallow breathing and stop replaying her mistakes in her mind.

In a moment of distraction, her eyes wander to Aliya, who lands a very clean and powerful double Arabian… then winces and pauses, lifting her left leg a bit while her dramatic floor track carries on. The sight pings against Aly’s heart like needles, and her mind replays the scene from a video every competing gymnast has seen: blue leotard, strong run, explosive entry, and a landing that bends and tears apart a knee.

She blinks a few times, like she has to wash the image from her vision. And then she takes a deeper breath than she has the entire day, and mounts the beam again.

——————-

Aliya’s fall off the beam drives into her head the crushing realization that a medal is now very, very unlikely. She transforms her disappointment into a kind of strength that can support Vika as she fights on for the all-around gold. And she sees—but tries her hardest not to think about it—that Aly Raisman’s score and hers are practically tied.

Then they _are_ tied. And then Aly loses the tie-breaker, and a few hours later, Aliya is alone in her room (Masha is with Vika, as always), staring unblinkingly at her bronze medal with every bit of happiness she can hold in her body, because that knee that is still healing and still hurting didn’t keep her from the podium. She had doubts about herself, and they were brief, but other people had doubts too and those were persistent, like a thundercloud that shadowed her everywhere she went. Now she has a silver medal and a bronze medal, and there’s only one other wound in her heart that is still bleeding.

Before her brain catches up to what, exactly, she’s doing, and why, Aliya has already exited the room and is heading down the hallway.

She avoided this place like the plague all of yesterday. Anastasia, the one teammate who is least informed in the matter of her involvement with Aly Raisman, asked Aliya to accompany her to the international store, and Aliya refused, because she likes her happiness and doesn’t want it to die by painful memories. Anastasia asked her to walk with her instead, to other stores, and Aliya complied because what the young girl really wanted was the company of someone who speaks English. On the way back, Aliya was distracted—very distracted, apparently—and that’s the only reason she didn’t realize until she was already inside that Anastasia had led her to the vending room. Immediately, she turned on her heel and, taking the largest strides she could before she was actually running, she made her way back to her room, forgetting all about Anastasia and her composure and the hotel’s rules that no one is allowed to run in the hallways, because _“how do you say ‘ice’ in Russian?”_ and _“I haven’t had a chance to kiss her back”_ were echoing in her head.

Right now, she has no such reaction. Her first impulse, when she reaches the entrance and takes in the all-too-familiar sight of the soda and ice machines, isn’t to run away as fast as she can, so her hurried heartbeats can drown out Aly’s voice in her head. Her first impulse is to step inside, and stay. So that’s what she does. She decides to conjure all the memories she has in this room, and let them hug her and weave their warmth through her, instead of trying to suffocate them and flush them out of her system because it’s just wasted effort; Aly Raisman isn’t going anywhere. These past dozen hours have proved that.

She can’t decide whether the universe or God—whatever controls fate and the way things work in the world—likes her very much, or absolutely hates her, because some minutes later she hears footsteps behind her, and because she already knows how she moves and her scent, and she’s already heard the tiny gasp she lets out when she’s truly, deeply surprised, Aliya doesn’t turn right away, to acknowledge who it is. She already knows who it is.


	8. Pretty. Bad. Ass. (Part 2)

(Oh. Wow.)

They stare at each other for some seconds; seconds that Aly doesn’t count because last time she did, things didn’t end up very well for them.

She swallows down an embarrassed, pained lump in her throat, hoping fervently that it’s not too obvious that she didn’t even bring any money with her, that there’s no purpose to her having come here except…

“ _I am certain, Russian girl want you to kiss back now.”_

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes softly, and thinks that maybe there’s nothing to apologize for, but this is easy to say, while there are so many things that aren’t. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

Aliya shakes her head vigorously.“I do not come here. Do not like this area.”

She notices that Aliya doesn’t seem to have been buying anything, and at the likelihood that she’s also here for no other reason than the same that brought Aly here, something inside Aly’s chest breaks into a hundred tiny pieces. It’s a wonder she’s able to say with a smile and an unwavering voice, “yeah, I don’t like it either. I think I kind of hate it, actually.”

This is truly, truly terrible. Being within ten feet of Aliya right now, when she’s gone so many seconds and minutes and hours and days without her, might be the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. Now she knows how drug addicts feel when they start to recover from their addiction, and start believing that they can build themselves back up, only to be exposed to the drug again and to the realization that everything is still ruins. And it doesn’t make her feel any better that Aliya is looking at her kind of hopelessly, kind of helplessly. Aly notices when she almost takes a step closer to her.

“There is American girl, I like very much; she buy ice here sometimes.”

She’s dreaming. That has to be it. They aren’t really talking, they aren’t really having a conversation—she just hasn’t woken up from her post-AA nap.

“What a coincidence…” she replies, voice smaller than her usual. She has to clear her throat to continue. “There’s this Russian girl that I like a lot, too, and she buys this really terrible soda here.” Aliya laughs softly, and Aly wants to join her, but her throat feels so raw that it’d probably hurt. Actually, everything hurts right now, so she figures she might as well continue her torture. She forces a smile and adds, “she’s a gymnast. You might know her.”

“ _This someone you like… Russian girl?”_

“ _Yeah. I think you might even know her.”_

Aliya winces, the same way she did after that landing on floor yesterday. They share the same memory on this, of course, so Aly kind of kicks herself for bringing it up and making Aliya share her misery, too.

There’s a fight going on inside of her, and she’s losing. She’s losing so badly that it would be a massacre if it were taking place outside of her own body, and out in the real world. There would be blood and limbs everywhere.

“I try before, not see you,” Aliya states, sounding very far away and sort of hollow. “I trying to… be okay, you far away, because after Olympics, not see you anymore. You going to leave…‘scar’?” She glances up thoughtfully, finding the right word. “Yes, scar. You going to leave scar on me. I not want that.”

The word she uses, like Aly is the equivalent to some deep wound, digs into her and starts to change her constitution. Well, if she’s already kind of burying her heart right here, she might as well lay out everything that’s inside her. “I’m really sorry, Aliya. I didn’t want you to get in trouble with your coaches, first of all.”

“I not caring about coaches,” the girl says, shaking her head. “Coaches not tell me everything to do. Coaches very upset, yes, but I not caring. I only fear that I go back to Russia, and hear your voice inside of head and inside of heart.”

There are a hundred thousand words floating inside her head, sprouting off disjointed feelings of ache and longing and a little bit of despair. “I’m sorry for everything. I think I should have stopped it, you know? Before it got to this point, before being away from you started to hurt. And if it ends up hurting you, too, then I’m really, really sorry for that, too. I just like you very much, and it made me not think about things clearly. I even…” She pauses; reminds herself to control her breathing, to keep all her different parts bound together, and not ramble, and be honest and clear. “I fear things, too. Mostly that this is never going to wear off, and I’m never going to get over you or go back to who I was before I met you.”

“Well, I not regret when I meet you,” Aliya says evenly, like this is an explanation of other things. For the first time in what feels like a very long time, Aly smiles, and it’s wide and genuine.

“No, I’d never regret meeting you. You introduced me to Milka chocolate—how could I regret meeting you?”

“I gave American chocolate to teammate, so she not tell others of you,” Aliya chuckles, and the sound fills Aly’s chest. “She tell others anyway, and now I do not have chocolate.”

“You bought Reese’s Pieces, right? I have some in my room if you want,” Aly offers easily, trying not to notice just how much better she feels being around this girl.

“I go to American room?”

“Yeah,” Aly smiles, amused by Aliya’s scandalized frown. “It’s not against the rules or anything, and McKayla is going to be out with the girls for a while; they’re shopping.” She feels a sudden, unexpected wave of courage sweep her limbs, and it fuels her to take a few steps closer to the girl. Now they’re at a friendly distance. “I promise I’m not going to hold you hostage and force you to bow to the American flag or anything like that.”

It’s Aliya’s easy laugh that finally makes Aly forget the disappointments of the day, and think that after a day and a half of fighting herself, there’s finally a cease-fire.

————————–

Even though Aly’s room is almost exactly like hers, Aliya still feels a rush of fascination when she steps inside and her eyes brush the things that set apart this room from her own: pictures, foods, clothes, all scattered around.

“You, very messy,” she comments with a teasing grin, and has to dodge a pillow that Aly throws her way. She laughs at the attack, and adds, “I help you clean before leaving.”

“How do you know the mess isn’t McKayla’s?” she asks with hilarious indignation.

Aliya points her chin at the messy bed on the messy half of the room, on top of which is a half-folded Olympics-souvenir shirt that has the word “Privet!” stamped across its front. “Maroney like Russian girl too?”

Immediately, Aly dashes to the bed and snatches the shirt, holding it behind her back with a sheepish blush. “You were totally not supposed to see that.” Her embarrassment only makes Aliya laugh again, and that strong current of happiness that she’s begun to associate with Aly makes its way through her body again. It makes being close to the girl unbearable and simultaneously the best sensation in the world.

Aliya’s attention is grabbed by a picture mounted on the desk beside Aly’s bed. Two adults and four children, among which is Aly, smiling widely and showcasing braces on her teeth.

“Oh my God, you weren’t supposed to see that either!”

As she watches Aly grab that picture frame as well, abashedly throwing it underneath some clothes inside her luggage, Aliya decides that she hasn’t seen a lot of things make her more content than being around Aly.

“Okay, next time we’re definitely going to _your_ room, so you can be the one getting embarrassed,” the American girl announces firmly, dissolving into a blushing grin when Aliya laughs again.

“I not think this is embarrassment,” Aliya begins, attempting to maintain a serious face in order to finish her joke. “Normal to have Russia shirt and metal inside mouth.”

“Ha ha, Aliya.” Aly rolling her eyes is almost as beautiful as when she smiles. “You’re hilarious. Oh, here; let me introduce you to American chocolate.”

Aliya takes the small bag offered to her, and is slightly surprised when all she tastes is… peanut.

“Not very much chocolate,” she comments with a shrug, popping a few more of the round candies in her mouth. “But very good.”

“I still have the Milka bar, if you prefer that,” Aly says, kneeling in order to go through a pile of clothes inside her luggage. Aliya watches her distracted motions, and her smile starts to disappear and her heart starts to beat with a dull ache as Aly goes on to tell her, “I didn’t eat everything. Well, I ate half of it before I met up with you that day in the vending room, and then afterwards I forgot about it, and then when I found it again, it was yesterday and I thought it was going to break my heart really badly if I ate it, so I just kind of hid it away.” Aliya feels like something is boiling inside her, filling her lungs and coming up her throat. Aly emerges from her mess with a bright, victorious smile and the Milka in her hand. “Here. Since you like this better.”

It’s almost like she can’t control her own body. She watches herself take a step closer to Aly, then another one, and then they’re as close as they used to be before everything went up in flames.

The room descends into a pulsing silence, something that matches Aliya’s own languid heartbeats, and this closeness only makes her want to get _closer_. She can’t tear her eyes from Aly’s, even when she begins to feel afraid of the position she’s in; if Aly doesn’t like her anymore, then… then so many things in her are going to fall apart.

“Aliya,” Aly’s quiet voice makes her words sound like thoughts that materialized into murmurs. “I don’t want to leave that scar on you.”

“No, Aly; too late. I already have scar.”

—————-

The familiarity is probably what strikes her first. The taste, the way her lips feel, and all the other things that got her hooked on Aliya from the very first time she kissed her—everything is there to make her wonder how she made it for so long without this, how she survived and how her body didn’t riot against her for depriving it of Aliya. Right now, nothing in the world seems worse than breaking off this kiss.

———————-

“I sleep in that shirt, you know. McKayla makes fun of me.”

“Shirt is very nice. I buy American shirt tomorrow, and sleep in shirt also.”

“As great as that would be, you don’t have to… I was sleeping in it because I missed you so much.”

“I miss you also when far. American shirt not as good as Russia shirt, but I will buy.”

“You know what? I would love to see that. Aliya Mustafina, in a shirt with the American flag. That has to be seen to be believed.”

“Okay, maybe I only show to you.”

————————-

Everything she sees, she wants to touch, and everything she touches, she wants to kiss. She navigates Aliya’s body as though creating a map of it in her mind; she learns the curves and corners and the warm places and the hotter places, and takes cues from a speeding pulse, and from the little moans and hiccups in her breath. By the time the girl is squirming and she’s kissing her again in order to keep any loud sounds from escaping the room, Aly’s entire body is coiled so tightly that she knows it won’t take much for her, it won’t take much at all. All Aliya has to do is touch her, and it really only takes a few moments and everything is throbbing and aching in the best way possible, and when she opens her eyes and sees Aliya’s smirk, she’s torn between rolling her eyes and kissing her.

Aliya makes a comment, of course. “Very fast, no?”

And Aly responds to the smugness with an attempt to be flippant. “Before you start to congratulate yourself, let me just say that I was already really wound up…” She trails off for a second when she notices the girl start to trail kisses down her collarbone, then her chest, and the top of her abdomen. “Um, I was already really wound up so yes, it ended up not taking a lot…” The rest of her sentence dies on her lips, of course, because now that Aliya’s made her way down there, Aly’s brain has completely ceased to function.

“Good, but I only was beginning.”

————————-

“I have no idea how I can explain a knock-knock joke to you.”

“Want to know, so please explain.”

“Okay, well, I’ll tell you one first and then we’ll go from there. So I’m going to say, 'knock, knock’ and then you say, 'who’s there?’ Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who is there?”

“Lettuce.”

“Let… letoos? The plant?”

“Yeah, the leafy stuff. Um… okay, I guess I forgot to tell you that you’re supposed to say, 'who’ after whatever I say. So let’s try again. Knock, knock.”

“Who is there?”

“Lettuce.”

“Letoos who?”

“Lettuce all join hands and hope for a better tomah-to. Get it?”

“No. American joke very confusing. And not funny.”

“Are you kidding; that was hilarious.”

“Another American person, not you, find this joke funny?”

“Okay, you’re right; only I would find it funny. But trust me, it’s actually hilarious.”

———————————-

It feels, to Aliya, like the day she really discovered gymnastics. It didn’t take her many years to find her gymnastics voice. There was _one day_ when things kind of fell together for her, and the world that she thought she was always going to be lost in, began to make sense: the gym was her place.

This feels a lot like that. Everything that ever gave her any sort of satisfaction or happiness was always very difficult, and so Aliya didn’t know that she’d find something that came to her so easily, and made everything feel so much better and _perfect_.

That’s a word gymnasts are discouraged from using, because it’s lofty and abstract and not real. But Aliya says it in her mind over and over again, and mumbles it under her breath when she kisses Aly’s skin and feels every reaction like the girl is an extension of herself: Aly is perfect, perfect, perfect.

———————-

“Does it still hurt?”

“Sometimes, when land tumble, there is pain. But not too bad.”

“I had never seen your scar before. I think it’s pretty badass.”

“Pretty. Bad. Ass?”

“Okay, those words don’t make sense together—and don’t translate that literally! You have a great ass. 'Badass’ is just an expression. I meant to say that you’re really, really cool. And you know, you injured your knee so recently, and you’re still so great that there are barely enough medals for everyone else. Here; a kiss for your badass scar.”

“Aly…”

“Oh, you want me to kiss you in other places? I can definitely kiss you in other places.”

—————————

When McKayla returns, their room is organized, and she almost drops her bags in shock. Aly is sitting on her bed with her phone in hand, and she knows she still smells like Aliya, and can still taste her on her lips and on her tongue, and it takes a lot of restraint not to break into a huge smile and an announcement that the world is a wonderful, fabulous place, and she’s so happy she could hug a naked stranger.

“Oh my God. Do my eyes deceive me or did you clean up the war zone that you were calling your side of the room?”

“Yep. It’s clean.”

“Who are you and what have you done to Alexandra Raisman?”

(I’m a girl who had sex with Aliya Mustafina. And it was the greatest thing in the history of mankind.)

The first time Aly Raisman cleaned her horribly messy room in the Olympic Village, Aliya Mustafina helped.


	9. Are You Tired?

**Monday, August 6th, 2012. 1:38pm**

“Oh my God! You had sex in the Olympics!”

The enormity of her shock at being confronted like this, with the sort of appalled horror that she’s never really seen on her friends’ faces, seems to physically push Aly against the wall behind her, and it’s probably what makes Aly’s heart freeze as though in mid-beat, and her mind and jaw sort of malfunction, to where she can’t quite form any words. “Uh…”

“Wha… how… why…” As opposed to McKayla’s shouts, Jordyn’s horrified questions are tinged with a baffled confusion. “Was it with Mustafina?”

“Of course it was, Jo! Oh my fucking God, Aly, you slept with Aliya Mustafina! In the Olympics!”

Aly thinks she might as well be one of the potted plants scattered throughout the room, because her brain activity is at about the same level as theirs. “I, um…”

Jordyn continues to frown and mull things over, accentuating the contrast between her demeanor and McKayla’s hell-fire, apocalyptic response. “When did you even have time to have sex with her? We’ve been with you this whole week.”

Unfortunately, that’s when Aly’s brain decides to jumpstart back into activity, and her reply slips out before her rational, self-preserving side can rein it in. “Well, the first time was after the all-ar—”

“THE FIRST TIME? YOU SLEPT WITH HER MORE THAN ONCE?!”

———–

**Sunday, August 5** **th** **, 2012. 9:35am**

Aliya doesn’t know why she keeps forgetting that she absolutely cannot look in the direction of the beams and floors. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t. That’s where Aly is training this morning, and Aliya swears that every time her gaze has distractedly wandered to that area, she caught sight of Aly either stretching, or biting her lip, or smiling—or worse—looking in her direction as well, and all these incidents do is make it extremely difficult for Aliya’s mind to do anything but replay scenes from yesterday. Less than 24 hours ago, the entire universe melted into a bed of entwined limbs and uneven breathing and a scary sort of throbbing in her chest and in her muscles that made her heart beat so strongly that she feared it might bruise her ribcage. And it’s difficult to believe now that it hasn’t been that long ago, judging by the way her insides sort of knot—almost painfully, almost unbearably—whenever Aly happens to look at her, like they’re calling for her, in their own way, to come closer and make everything feel like it did yesterday.

But she keeps forgetting not to look, and this is the result: Aliya’s eyes wander to the beam area and it’s almost like Aly is a magnet whose pull she’s just never going to be immune to; their eyes meet and Aly smiles warmly; Aliya swallows hard because suddenly, like a cinder block that hits her in the chest, she can smell Aly again on her skin. And it’s a terrible feeling, she thinks, to fight her body and her muscles and her bones, when they are all rioting against her mind and pushing her to walk over to Aly, ignoring the obvious fact that she can’t. Aliya barely smiles back, then turns her attention back to the uneven bars. The 90-second periods in which she’s performing her routine are the only times she’s not thinking about Aly.

A long, tortuous three hours later, just as most athletes are finishing their training in order to attend the vault finals today, Aliya and Vika begin to pack away their gear and wait for Ksenia to conclude a last run-through of her floor. Aliya is already dressed in her team pants and jacket, but she notices a large chalk powder stain on her shirt and, after her attempts to slap the excess powder prove fruitless, excuses herself to the locker room in order to clean it.

She’s distractedly washing her hands afterward on the sink, examining the shine of the sink’s porcelain and following the path of the soap bubbles down the drain, and so she feels, rather than hears or sees, Aly’s approach. Her body immediately reacts to the proximity; erratic heartbeats, heavier breathing, and skin that begins to tingle as it remembers the feel of Aly’s hands and lips. Slowly, she turns her head and it’s the first time she kind of wishes Aly smiled less, because the way her grin is beaming and flushed sends a rush of awe through Aliya, who stands in place and can’t think of anything to say except a low, almost mumbled “hello.”

Aly watches her for a second, and Aliya guesses that the girl is picking up on her nervousness. It seems to amuse her, and rather than greet her back, Aly whispers, “do you have any idea how hard it’s been to go through today pretending I didn’t want to talk to you?”

Maybe it’s because she hadn’t heard Aly’s voice in a while, or because it’s a relief that the girl’s been suffering just as much as she has, but this is finally what makes Aliya grin back. “Yes. I feel same.”

Simultaneously, they turn back to their respective sinks when they hear a pair of athletes walk by. Aly tracks their distance down the locker room hallway, and it’s because the girl isn’t dressed yet—she’s still in her training attire, which consists of a skintight sports shirt and shorts—that Aliya’s sight is drawn to sweep the body she was seeing, touching, and kissing, less than a day ago. Aly turns back to her after a few seconds, looking like she’s about to say something, and Aliya shifts her attention to the girl’s face. But something seems to catch the girl off-guard, and she narrows her eyes for a quick second, a blush becoming apparent on her cheeks.

“You know, there’s a term in America for what you were doing just now,” she comments, still whispering, and her lips curve into a smirk. “It’s called ‘eye-sexing.’ Ever heard of it?”

Aliya frowns, running the words in her head and wondering whether Aly will give her any context clues. “Having sex with eye?”

Aly covers a laugh by placing a hand over her mouth; Aliya wouldn’t be pleased about being laughed at if it were by anyone but Aly. The girl’s laughs however, even at her expense, make her muscles melt inside her body and manage to calm every worry running in her mind.

“No… it means…” Her laughter dies down but she still watches Aliya with a large, sparkling smile. “I’m not sure how to explain it… I guess I have to show you.” Aliya bites a corner of her lip with curiosity when Aly allows her smile to fade, then trains a long, fixed gaze into her eyes. There is indeed a glint there, something intriguing and heady that’s pulling Aliya in, and charging the atmosphere between them with a strange sort of heat. And then it hits her, abruptly and unexpectedly—she can remember distinctively the last time Aly looked at her like that.

“ _…there are barely enough medals for everyone else. Here; a kiss for your badass scar.”_

_It’s not that she’s ever let her lingering insecurities about her knee really bother her. But for some reason, hearing matter-of-factly from Aly Raisman, her competitor and one of the best gymnasts in the world, that of course she’s still Aliya Mustafina, busted knee and all, and of course she wins everything—it makes her insides quiver again, submerges her in a thick, heavy liquid that only makes her want Aly more than she’s ever wanted anything before. When she speaks, her voice is strange; it’s far away but right here, for Aly to hear._

“ _Aly…”_

_The American girl watches her fixedly, and then her lips are moving from her knee and trailing the inside of her thigh, burning and branding her skin, and Aliya really just can’t_ breathe _. “Oh, you want me to kiss you in other places? I can definitely kiss you in other places.”_

“That is…” Her voice doesn’t sound as firm as she had intended, so Aliya clears her throat. “That is what I did?”

“Yeah,” Aly says, back to smiling instead of making Aliya weak with a single look. She glances around again, probably trying to spot anyone nearby. “Are you and the rest of your team going to see the vault final today?”

“Yes. Masha competing today.”

Aliya expects Aly to make a comment about her teammate Maroney, the overwhelming favorite to win, but instead, she feels her grab her hand then pull her down one of the locker room’s hallways, all the way down to a row of changing rooms that Aliya had never paid attention to before. Aly guides her inside one of the stalls, shuts the door, then presses her ear to it. Aliya does the same, more out of instinct than because she thinks she’s going to pick up on anything that Aly doesn’t.

“Okay, I don’t think anyone saw us,” Aly whispers, and Aliya realizes how close they are. She allows herself one second to appreciate the girl’s beauty, and the angles and curves of the face she sees even when she closes her eyes.

At the sight of another deep blush creeping into Aly’s features, Aliya asks, also keeping her voice down, “I eye sex you again?”

Aly shakes her head and laughs, then leans away from the door and envelops Aliya in a tight, warm hug that sends all of Aliya’s thoughts into a scattered mess. “No… I just really wanted to be with you, all day.”

She feels the words beat against her chest and revels in the sensation. When her lips find Aly’s, Aliya understands the scope of how greatly she had been anticipating this—indeed, for every second of today, from the moment she woke up and glanced at her body and felt some lingering heat from everywhere Aly had touched her, to the millisecond before this kiss.

It’s deep, excited, breathless, and a little desperate, and some corner of Aliya’s mind is just about to wonder, fleetingly and distantly, if she should remove her jacket since it feels like this little room is sitting on top of a volcano, when Aly suddenly breaks the kiss by drawing a quick breath, then takes a tiny step away from Aliya. She’s halfway through realizing that she had begun to roll up Aly’s shirt to take it off when Aly breathes out with a small chuckle, “don’t, Aliya. We can’t do anything here and I should smack you for being such a tease.“

There’s another unfamiliar word to switch the gears in her brain from Aly’s lips and Aly’s body and Aly’s everything, to how complicated the English language is. "Tees?”

“You’re winding me up and you can’t do anything about it.”

Aliya comprehends, sort of, what she means, and amid trying to slow down her still-racing heart, decides to 'tease’ the girl a little further. “I can do about it,” she retorts with an easy grin.

Her statement only makes Aly smile wider, and cross her arms over her chest. “Oh, really.”

Aliya wants badly to laugh at the girl’s incredulity, but instead she continues solemnly, “yes. And it take short time because I very good and you very fast.”

Immediately, Aly’s jaw slacks and her eyes flare alive and Aliya begins to laugh in expectation of her reply, because Aly’s response to being mocked is always entertaining. “As cute as you are, getting all cocky about that, I’m not worried about how much time we have. What I’m worried about is you.” She licks her lips and tilts her head slightly, and adds with confidence, “we can’t do this here because you’re… really… _loud_.” The last word is whispered into her ear, and a pleasant shiver that travels its way through Aliya’s body confuses her senses somewhat, because a large part of her wants to argue with the American, while a larger part wants to begin taking all of the girl’s clothing off.

Aliya’s smile falters, just a bit, much to Aly’s obvious satisfaction. “I not loud.”

“Yes, you are,” Aly maintains with a warm smile, reaching out to rest a hand on her waist. “If I hadn’t had my ways to keep your noise down yesterday, those women from the Korean archery team in the room next door would’ve heard you.” She chuckles again, and a much as Aliya tries to come up with a reprisal, she can’t really remember whether she was loud or not… well, she remembers Aly doing plenty of things that felt like they would elicit some noise from her, but it’s hard to recall anything else.

Just as she thinks she’s about to have a good response—something alluding to the fact that Aly wasn’t exactly the most silent person either—they hear Ksenia’s familiar voice call Aliya’s name from what sounds like a few rows away.

“Go; I’ll see you later at the Arena,” Aly says quickly, giving her another lingering kiss. It’s very, very hard to break away and take the first few steps towards the doorway.

Aliya pauses and looks back to where the American girl stands, flushed and warm and smiling brightly. “Next time,” Aliya tells her seriously, “I make you be loud one.” She leaves the changing room with a satisfied grin, wishing she could have stayed a little longer, just to watch Aly’s wide-eyed reaction.

———————

The girls have all decided to hold their places inside the Arena while Aly waits outside to meet the men’s team so they can all sit together, and while Aly knows that they still have some time before the women’s vault final begins—about forty minutes, actually—it still makes her nervous when only Danell and Sam actually get to their meeting place on time and there’s no sign of the others. Jake is still changing after his own floor final competition, but Jonathan and John should be there already.

Aly glances at the time on her phone again before sighing and turning her attention back to the boys.

“Okay, how about Canada?” Sam is asking Danell, and their wide grins lets Aly know what they’re talking about—girls, of course—before she even hears Danell’s reply.

“Pegg. Dominique Pegg is, hands down, the hottest.”

Aly is about to roll her eyes good-naturedly when she spots both Jonathan and John approaching them, and she smiles with relief as she greets them.

“Jake is going to be another ten minutes,” Jonathan explains to her while John quickly joins the other boys in a round of laughter.

“That’s because you like blondes,” Sam argues, and Aly watches both John and Jonathan, now fully immersed in the conversation, nod vigorously.

“Fine, then; Romania?” Danell poses, and John practically jumps to reply.

“Ponor!”

“Yes, that’s what _I’m_ talking about,” Jonathan agrees with some laughter, fist-bumping John.

“I like Izbasa,” Danell says, shrugging while dodging a shove from Sam.

“See? Another blonde,” Sam accuses lightly.

Aly realizes she’s smilingly watching this exchange and is almost sort of invested in it, mentally agreeing and disagreeing with their choices. She even takes a second to conduct an inner debate: who _is_ the better-looking Romanian, Ponor or Izbasa? Ponor is probably seen as the sexier one, being older and all… but Izbasa is all smiles and the blondness does sort of add to—

“What about Russia?”

Immediately, Aly’s thoughts are halted and she doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath until she hears Sam, John, and Danell all reply in unison to Jonathan’s question; “MUSTAFINA.”

Can she smile? Do they know? She really, really wants to smile.

“I thought you liked blondes, Dan,” John reminds.

“Yeah, no Paseka for you?” Jonathan amends, but Danell shakes his head and holds out his hands as though surrendering.

“Mustafina is the hotness; what can I say? The girl looks evil and high-maintenance but _damn_ that body and that face.”

Aly releases a tiny laugh, and then has to force a cough in order to hide it.

“What do you think, Aly?” Sam asks, and all three other boys turn to her with genuine curiosity.

“Yeah, girls are all weird with how other girls look; who do you think is the best-looking Russian?”

Of course the answer is glaringly obvious, but Aly has to pretend to mull it over for a bit, mentally high-fiving herself because _yes_ , Aliya is indeed “the hotness.” And Aly’s the one who gets to see her naked. “I have to agree with you guys… Mustafina is definitely it.”

————————-

Aly had to give all sorts of excuses for why she wouldn’t stay to watch the men’s pommel horse final with everyone else, and why she’d just meet up with the disappointed McKayla once she returned to the hotel. A slight pang of guilt almost made her rethink her decision to meet up with Aliya, but all it took was for her to exit her taxi and walk to the grassy area in front of their hotel at the Olympic Village, and for her to catch sight of the Russian girl patiently sitting and waiting on one of the wooden benches, to make all the reluctance and double-guessing evaporate from her thoughts.

She paused on the cement walkway that winds through the grass, only a few yards away from Aliya, and even if it was futile endeavor—and she knew it would be because she had done this a hundred times since the moment Aliya saved her from tripping that day in the hallway—she tried to get a hold of the little excited hurricane that always wrecks havoc inside her anytime Aliya’s near her.

Aliya noticed the headphones lowered around her neck, and Aly kind of kicked herself for not having the foresight to hide them inside her backpack, because then Aliya wanted to know what she was listening to, and Aly had to bravely push past her embarrassment to reveal that she had downloaded all the songs in Russia’s Top 40 radio chart.

Right now, as Aliya scrolls down the list of songs and lets out her 500th laugh at her expense, Aly is past blushing and past wanting to run away, and instead has fully embraced being the reason for Aliya’s laughter. She even laughs with her a little, commenting weakly that one of the songs sounds kind of scary because Russian rapping is very disturbing. Aliya’s beaming so brightly and excitedly that Aly thinks she could do stupid things every day of her life if it means that Aliya will always smile like this.

“I give you good Russia music later. This, not very good.” Setting the phone down after another teasing laugh, Aliya turns to her and announces with an enormous grin, “I have surprise also. I learn American flirting for you.”

Aly blinks back some confusion. “What do you mean?”

Nothing prepares her for Aliya’s response.

“Aly, you are tired? Because you run through my mind all day.”

_Wha…_ “Oh. My. God.”

Aliya continues, blushing her whole way through it. “If we had garden, I put my tulips and your tulips together.”

This is when Aly finally, truly reacts; instead of open-mouthed shock, she begins to laugh with disbelief and awe, and that hurricane that seems to toss all her insides around sends a rush from her bloodstream to her brain that screams inside her mind, _AliyaAliyaAliya_. And Aly just doesn’t know what to do with her limbs, because she wants to kiss Aliya, and she wants to hug her, and she wants to pull her back to her room like yesterday, and she wants to talk to her forever so they can always laugh, and she wants to close her eyes and listen to Aliya’s voice—and she just really wants to be with her, every hour of every day.

“If I change alphabet, I put U and I together.”

Aly takes Aliya’s hand in hers and tries to control her laughing, or at least regain her breath. “Oh my God, stop. You are the _cheesiest_ flirt!” She deduces that Aliya probably doesn’t understand what “cheesy” means in this context, but they’re both laughing and Aliya’s blush is making Aly’s head feel feverish. “And yet… it’s totally working on me.”

“It work? Good flirting from me?” Aliya is obviously excited and proud, and it takes all the resolve in the world for Aly not to kiss her right then and there, in the middle of the Olympic Village.

“Yes,” Aly states, nodding to display how impressed she is. “If we were anywhere else, I’d be all over you.” Aliya grins widely, then takes a quick surveying look around them, before pressing a quick kiss on Aly’s cheek. And even though it’s fairly innocent, the feel of her lips against her skin makes everything inside Aly twist and turn and she realizes she’s getting more and more breathless the longer she has Aliya’s hand inside hers. “And you don’t need to flirt with me, you know.” She releases the girl’s hand to conserve her own sanity, but Aliya’s eyes are gleaming like fire while simultaneously darkening to a different shade of hazel. “I’m already yours.”

—————

The first time Aly Raisman goes to Aliya Mustafina’s room, they’re in a hurry.

They bump into a male gymnast from Canada on the way, in the elevator, and he insists on chatting with them. That isn’t the problem. The problem is Aliya, standing behind Aly as she patiently attempts to carry on a conversation with this boy; at first, all Aly feels is a very light touch on her back, which she dismisses right away because she figures Aliya is just nudging her to speed things up but _come on_ , it’s not like she’s enjoying talking to this guy instead of racing back to Aliya’s room. But then the same hand begins to trace a pattern under her jacket and under her shirt, on the small of her back, and Aly understands exactly what Aliya’s doing—distracting her completely, is what she’s doing—and she’s torn between being moderately annoyed, and being incredibly turned on. And she’s not usually torn between those two feelings, so she loses track of what the guy was saying, and looks rude when he asks her something and all she can is stare at him blankly.

However, they do get to Aliya’s room and in seconds, Aly has managed to take off Aliya’s team jacket and track pants, while Aliya is focusing on kissing her and removing Aly’s pants as well. Aliya comments breathlessly that it’s good that Aly’s fast—and Aly smiles at the teasing because she’s not that fast, goddang it—because thanks to Aly and her Canadian friend, they have about an hour and a half before their teams get back from the North Greenwich Arena. Two hours was what they had last time, and it wasn’t really enough.

A second later, Aliya is on her back on the bed while Aly straddles her, bending down to kiss her neck while Aliya’s hands begin to roam and roam and touch her in places that very loudly ask for more. “Okay, I’m sorry I don’t know how to be curt like you Russians,” Aly argues back, just as breathless as Aliya had been before, “but you also can’t touch me like that in public, because every time you touch me, doesn’t matter where, my brain doesn’t work right…”

Aliya’s hands pause on her body, then fall beside her on the bed. “I feel same. You touch me, I go little bit crazy. But you not want me to touch, I not touch you.“

Aly sits up and licks her lips with a frown, ignoring her hammering heartbeats and ignoring her pulsing muscles. "I never said I don’t want you to touch me.”

“I understand. Hands will not be close to you.” Aliya maintains a serious expression, but it’s a tiny twitch on the corner of her lip that tips Aly off that she’s not, in fact, being serious. She’s enjoying Aly’s flustered reaction. Clearly, this is payback for making her wait in the elevator.

But because this is easily the world’s biggest bluff, Aly decides to call her on it. “Really. You think you can keep your hands to yourself.”

“Yes, I know so.” Aliya offers her an easy, taunting smile, her breathing making the muscles in her abdomen contract like they did when… Aly focuses back on their conversation.

“I really doubt that. I can prove to you that you can’t, not even for the next ten minutes.” And if Aliya is going to bluff like this, then Aly might as well raise the stakes. “In fact, I think we should bet on this.”

Maybe it’s because they’re both naturally competitive, but Aliya responds to the proposition with almost as much excitement as she did when Aly began taking her clothes off. “That is good idea. What I get for win?“

"Well, if _I_ win,” Aly explains with a mischievous grin, “I want a picture of you, in that shirt with the American flag on it.” Aliya is disgusted by the idea, of course, which makes Aly laugh. “What do you want if you win? Not that that’s gonna happen, by the way.”

Aliya shrugs calmly. “I tell you after winning.”

“That’s not fair,” Aly protests. “What if it’s something I can’t do or can’t give you?”

Aliya simply shakes her head calmly, then gives her another serene smile. “You can give me. Do not worry.”

It’s a little unnerving to think about all the things Aliya could have her do if she wins, but the thrill of competition, mixed with the thrill of sex, is powerful enough to cloud over Aly’s mind completely, and it’s in that haze of her irresistible attraction to Aliya that she says, “we have a bet, then. Ten minutes.”

Immediately, she bends down again to kiss Aliya, and although she feels the girl’s breathing alter, and feels the heat between them increasing, Aliya’s hands remain at her side. Aly moves down to her neck, and it’s great that she paid attention last time around and knows the specific points where a kiss or a pressing of the tongue makes Aliya draw heavier breaths, which is what happens now. Aly pulls back just a bit, just enough to see Aliya wincing a bit.

“You’re not going to make it to ten minutes, I can tell.”

Aliya laughs softly, tinged with haughtiness. “You waste time, American. Talk not affect me.”

Aly has to laugh then, too, and she glances at the clock and sees that she’s already at the two-minute mark and it really doesn’t look like Aliya is budging.

Well… she has a few more tricks to try. She starts to remove the remainder of her clothing, and is very, very hapy when Aliya widens her eyes. Her shirt is off, then she’s slowly removing her bra, because even though time is what this bet is all about, she’s aware that Aliya likes to see her body as much as she likes touching it. And it’s a very satisfying sensation to watch Aliya sort of lose her bearings a bit, swallowing hard and trying so obviously hard not to stare.

“I think I’m winning,” Aly murmurs with a smile, drawing Aliya’s attention to her face. “And I think you really want to lose this.”

“I not lose. Never.”

“I know you don’t. But right now you want to.”

Aliya doesn’t reply, and Aly bends down again to kiss her, knowing that the feel of her bare chest against hers is going to mess with Aliya’s composure at least a little bit. When she feels Aliya’s small pant against her lips, she thinks victory is indeed near. And then she guesses she still has about four minutes left, which gives her just enough time to perform a last desperate measure.

“Well, good thing we never said anything about me touching you,” she mutters, and allows her hands to wander just as Aliya’s did. She feels the hike in temperature almost immediately when her fingers brush each hot inch of skin, and then an instant response when her hands go down there—Aliya almost sits up, and looks at her with indignant shock and a very deep blush.

“You cheat.”

“How is that cheating?” Aly inquires, blushing too because this does feel like cheating, a little bit. She knows she would never be strong enough to fight it if positions were reversed and Aliya was the one with her hand in her underwear. “Aliya, you should give up already. Just touch me,” she says, trying hard not to sound like she’d prefer not to have to wait another three minutes till the time is up.

“No. Must win,” Aliya insists, and Aly swears she curses under her breath when she glances at the clock as well.

“You know, I’ll give you whatever it is that you want,” Aly offers, kissing the hollow of Aliya’s neck, then pressing another heated kiss on the girl’s collarbone. “What did you want if you won?”

Aly raises her head to watch the girl, and what she sees is hesitation. Aliya Mustafina doesn’t display that very often, and a small whisper of apprehension locks Aly’s brain, airtight. "Telephone number for you in America, so when I go back to Russia, I can call you.”

She sits up, and probably flinches. She thinks 'probably’ because she doesn’t know how her own body reacts. She knows how her mind reacts, and it’s with a strange explosion of confused strands of thoughts, as they widen and expand and begin to cover beyond the Olympics—Aliya is thinking about the after, about what will happen when this week ends. And she wasn’t, not until now.

“That’s what you wanted?” Aly breathes out, heart clenching and lungs decompressing. “You thought you needed to win a bet to get my number?”

“You never say to me if you want talk after Olympics, so I do not know. Do not want to… ask you to talk if not want to talk.” Aliya’s explanation is so simple, and so clear, and it makes _too much_ sense. Aly wants to double over and cry, because this is a different sort of pain than she’s used to, and it changes the happiness she feels that Aliya doesn’t want _this_ , this week, these Olympics, these hours together, to be the end.

“If you get my number, I’m going to call you, too. Every day. I’m going to want to hear your voice and your accent. And you’re going to have to tell me about your day, and what kind of music you’re listening to, and whether you’ve been drinking any horrible sodas or eating any Milka chocolates. And you’re going to have to keep liking me until we see each other again, because I’ll be liking you and I’ll never give you a Reese’s Pieces again if you hurt me.”

Aliya whispers something in Russian, and Aly only knows that it’s a good thing because she’s smiling. Later on, she translates it for her, and it means “perfect.”

——————————-

**Monday, August 6th, 2012. 1:45pm**

“Well, the first time was after the all-ar—”

“THE FIRST TIME? YOU SLEPT WITH HER MORE THAN ONCE?!”

Aly moves past her shock and settles into a mix of indignation—of being yelled at for something that isn’t really against the rules or anything—and irritation because Jesus Christ, they’re being so loud.

“Mack! Do you want to yell that a little louder; I don’t think the other side of London heard you.”

“Hey guys,” Kyla’s head pops in at the door, and she watches their frozen frames anxiously for a bit before asking, “everything okay? I heard yelling all the way to my room.”

“Everyone in the _Olympic Village_ heard,” Aly scowls, then picks up her backpack and gives Jordyn—who looks slightly queasy—and McKayla—who looks ready to tackle Aly down—a challenging glare. “We’re late for Gabby’s event. You guys coming?”

The three girls wordlessly follow Aly to their taxi, and it’s only after a few minutes in traffic that Jordyn speaks up, apparently still trying to piece together the logistics and timetable of her relationship with Mustafina. “So… that first time, was it in your room or hers?”

Mother of God. When are they going to drop this? “Ours.”

Immediately, she covers her ears, bracing herself for McKayla’s reactions. “EEWWWW OH MY GOD OUR ROOM?!”


	10. Uneven Bars

**Monday, August 6 th, 2012. 8:32am**

“Hi. Is Aliya here?”

Aly tried to conjure up as much bravery as she could on her way here, in case Paseka was the one who answered the door, but now she’s finally here and the blond girl, who appears to have just woken up, is staring at her like she’s asked her whether there are flying plants inside her room.

“Yes.”

Aly blinks a few times, then realizes that either this girl is keen on making things difficult for her or they’re having communication issues. Either way, she’s not leaving until she sees Aliya. Today is the uneven bars final and she’s having a four-hour training session with Jordyn this morning while the men have the still rings final, and yes, she will be going to the Arena in order to watch Gabby compete, but it’s very possible that she won’t see Aliya at all after that. There’s a good chance that one of the Russians girls—Aliya or Komova—will end up with the gold, consequently having to attend the post-competition press conference. It’s probable that they’ll also want to stay for the men’s vault final to cheer on their compatriot Denis Ablyazin. Aly herself will be back at the training gymnasium after the uneven bar final for a final run-through of both her beam and floor routines, and even if Aliya decides to practice her floor for tomorrow, they won’t exactly have a chance to be together. So that’ll be it—a whole day without spending a single minute with her. God, there mere thought of going that long without any interaction with her makes her unpleasantly queasy.

She clears her throat and tries her best to sound extra polite. “Um… can I talk to her?”

Paseka gives her one last narrow-eyed look, then steps back inside the room and calls out an entire phrase in Russian, from which the only sound Aly understands is “Raisman.”

Immediately she hears stirring inside the room, and a second later Aliya is at the door, also bleary-eyed and surprised, but smiling widely enough that Aly’s entire body begins to feel warm.

“Hi,” Aly greets, barely containing her excitement. Aliya steps out, closing the door behind her, and Aly, who had been practicing this but hadn’t really planned to bust it out this morning, blurts out timidly, “I mean, doobre-ootra.”

She watches Aliya’s mouth drop slightly, then she’s smiling so happily and brightly that Aly wonders distantly whether the lights around them are actually dimming. “You speak Russian for me?” Before Aly can reply—and she had been planning to ask whether what she said was really “good morning” or if her bad pronunciation meant she said something else entirely, like a cursing word—Aliya is already pulling her closer and wrapping her arms around her neck and giving her the sort of hot, breathless kiss that Aly is pretty sure isn’t supposed to take place in a hotel hallway. Her skin begins to burn wherever it comes into contact with Aliya and her bones and muscles start to throb again like they’re bracing themselves to be touched and kissed. Aly thinks fleetingly about yesterday, about how the combination of that being their second time together—of them knowing their way around the other’s body a little better—and the urgency of not having a lot of time, made things a little… rougher than before. She might even be a little sore…

When Aliya breaks it off with an entrancingly brilliant grin, Aly forgets that she needs to catch her breath, because her body suddenly feels cold without Aliya to keep it warm and she realizes she can still taste the girl on her tongue. So instead of taking a moment for her lungs to recover, she licks her lips and pants out, “were you eating Reese’s Pieces?”

Aliya’s ensuing blush makes Aly wish they hadn’t stopped kissing; she could live without oxygen, right? “I eat American chocolate, and you come to door and speak Russian. I think I dreaming right now.”

“No… I’m here,” Aly whispers while raising a hand to her chest, hoping it’ll help her finally get a hold of the flutters currently causing a disarray inside her. “I came here to wish you luck today. I want you to do really well.”

Aliya grins, then points out with a raised eyebrow, “American also competing today.”

Aly lets out a low laugh when Aliya feigns scandal. “I want Gabby to win, of course. But I want _you_ to do well. I… I want you to perform like you do when you’re training.”

The Russian girl closes her eyes for a moment, then nods with an appreciative smile. Aly knows the weight of her words; the best any gymnast can do is the mistake-free routine that is practiced for hundreds of hours over so many years.

“Knee is hurting this morning,” Aliya tells her in a low, careful voice, and Aly is momentarily stunned by the significance of this admission. She _feels_ , rather than thinks, her reaction.

“Don’t think about your knee,” she says quietly. “When you’re up in the bars, you’re not going to think about the pain. You’re going to be really focused and you’ll stick that badass dismount of yours.”

Aliya’s gaze, which had been so clouded and uncharacteristically morose, instantly brightens, and the sight makes Aly’s insides knot and twist and turn with happiness. “I know what ‘badass’ mean. You teach me before. I remember.”

Aly is aware that all gymnasts have some sort of pre-competition morning regimen, and the thought of messing up Aliya’s makes her nervous beyond belief. She leans forward and kisses Aliya again, resting a hand against the girl’s cheek and hoping she can remember the feeling later when her body begins to ache as hours go by without any contact with the girl. “Oodacha, Aliya.”

Five hours later, after training is over and she’s with Jordyn and McKayla in her room, Aly has finished showering and is changing into what she had set out to wear to the uneven bar final. Still in her underwear, she kneels down to grab a shirt from her luggage, and that’s when Jordyn frowns and McKayla gasps. It takes a few seconds for Aly to piece together what it is about her body that is causing their appalled shock, until she finally looks down at her chest, and while her mind flashes to the day before, to a particular moment when Aliya decided to count her ribs with kisses and then couldn’t keep her mouth confined to that area and decided instead to move on up to her chest, Aly realizes she has hickeys. And the biggest one is on her right breast.

“Aly, is that a hic—”

“Oh my God! You had sex in the Olympics!”

————————-

The first time Jordyn Wieber notices it, it’s apparently been going for a while. She’s the one who saw the hickey first, and she really, really regrets pointing it out because that incident turned out to be like a car accident that became a pile of wreckage the more McKayla expressed her absolute horror. Aly, for her part, allowed the barrage of scandalized scolding for a while before snapping back, of course, but now they’re finally seated at the Arena, silently and awkwardly waiting for the uneven bars finals to begin, and Jordyn just can’t get all her five hundred questions from racing inside her mind.

She looks over to her right, past McKayla, and into Aly’s wary, expectant gaze. “So, wait; you slept with her right after she got the bronze medal in the AA instead of you?” Aly rolls her eyes for what seems like the hundredth time this morning, and McKayla’s scowl of disgust deepens, but Jordyn persists. “When did it even start anyway? I mean, did you already _know_ her before the Games?”

“No, I didn’t,” Aly replies flatly, and Jordyn can tell she’s trying to reign back her irritation, for her sake—if this were McKayla asking, Jordyn is sure Aly wouldn’t even be answering. “I just started talking to her here.”

“Actually, I can tell you exactly when it started,” McKayla cuts in, and before Aly can protest, she continues, “it was our first day here, and Aly left the room to get ice. She was gone for like, 10 minutes. Then she came back with stars in her eyes and knowing Russian words.”

“Is she teaching you Russian?” Jordyn asks with surprise, her line of interrogation momentarily sidetracked.

Aly is still busy throwing McKayla an icy glare, but she replies evenly, “no, just some words.”

“What kind of words?” Jordyn inquires, before shaking her head suddenly, all sorts of horrified warnings springing inside her mind. “Wait, no; if they’re sex-related words, I don’t want to know.”

Aly’s gasp and McKayla’s snickers make Jordyn aware that she’s forgetting to think before voicing her thoughts.

“Really, Jo?” Aly is indignant, and slaps McKayla lightly to stop her laughter. “You guys are unbelievable.”

The competition begins and when it’s Mustafina’s turn, Jordyn notices _it_ again, because Aly is trying so hard to hide how she sits up in her chair the moment Tweddle finishes her routine and the Russian girl positions herself by the bars. Jordyn trades a perplexed look with McKayla when Aly visibly tenses during each of the girl’s release moves, and then even exhales after the stuck dismount, like she was actually holding her breath.

“If your life were a movie, I know exactly what it would be called,” McKayla states gravely, but Jordyn picks up the edge of irritation. Aly glances their way, but returns her attention to the scoreboard almost immediately. Until she hears McKayla continue, of course. “How does 'From Russia With Love’ sound?”

Jordyn stiffens, because Aly is an even-tempered person and all, but McKayla is really pressing the buttons here and she can see a hundred ways this interaction can go very, very wrong.

So she’s relieved when Aly actually laughs, blushing a bit. “Horrible.”

Jordyn decides this is the moment to be good-natured, too, and dispel any possible hostility in the air by following that up with a joke of her own. “Yeah, I’d say 'Sleeping With the Enemy’ is better.”

“Maybe 'Behind Enemy Lines’?” McKayla ventures with a smirk, apparently swept up by the easy atmosphere.

“'The Spy Who Loved Me,'” Jordyn adds, mentally celebrating with relief, and by now Aly is watching the two of them with embarrassed disbelief.

“You guys _suck_. That is all.”

“By the way, what did the Russian room look like?” McKayla asks, smiling through her taunt. “Did it have a huge Federation flag on the wall?”

Jordyn wants to resist the temptation to make fun of her friend even further, but Aly’s deepening blush is just too hilarious to handle and she even begins to forget what happened that morning. “Or a picture of Putin?”

“Well, since you guys are asking, I wasn’t even paying atten…” Aly begins to retort, and through the beginning of her sentence, Jordyn already begins to feel a little queasy in expectation of where the girl is heading. But Aly trails off when the score board registers a change in numbers, and when Aly can’t hold back an enormous grin at the sight of Mustafina’s now-leading score, Jordyn realizes that she’s always going to be noticing it, so she might as well accept it as a fact; that Aly and Aliya do indeed have something going on, and there’s some sort of stream of deep feelings running underneath it all. That even if Jordyn has never even seen those two standing next to each other, something was brewing at the sidelines when no one was looking, and now there are hickeys and smiles to prove it. She decides with a small internal nod that she’s not going to notice it anymore.

————-

The first time Ksenia Afanasyeva noticed it, her team had just lost the gold medal to the Americans, and Masha’s comment about the sneaking out and the American merchandise all began to make sense. Today, she notices it again. She and Vika left the uneven bars final early, to practice their floor and beam routines at the gymnasium for tomorrow’s final. Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber arrived minutes after them, and along with all the other qualifiers for floor and beam, Ksenia practices and practices until she begins to feel exhaustion leaking through her bones and out of her pores.

And then Aliya arrives, fresh from her gold medal victory. Ksenia’s eyes snap to the Raisman girl before she can help herself, and she sees it so clearly that it’s hard to fathom how this thing between them grew so large and so strong in such a short time. There is a look that they trade, and it’s weighed down by something that Ksenia doesn’t want to identify, because it’d feel like an intrusion on their privacy.

Aliya goes on to train her floor, and she uses the mat directly beside Raisman’s. Ksenia sees them talk only once, when Raisman finally shows sign of fatigue and sits down by the steps beside her mat. Aliya makes her way to the girl, and then there are smiles and some low laughing, and then Aliya is extending a hand to help the American girl to her feet. Raisman picks up her routine where she left off, and Ksenia glances at Alexandr, to see whether he’s observing this. He’s pretending he isn’t.

——————–

The first time Kyla Ross notices it, it takes her a while to gather from everyone’s strange behavior that everyone had already noticed, except her.

Training is done for the afternoon and once everyone had showered and changed, Gabby and McKayla managed to drag everyone to the shopping square inside the Olympic Village—even Aly and Jordyn, who appear the most exhausted. Kyla is the last person to spot the approaching Russian team, but she is one of the first to greet them. Then something catches her attention; Aly and Aliya Mustafina exchange greetings but instead of moving along, they stay in place. And talk. The Russian team enters the international shop, Gabby begins to walk along the shop windows, and Jordyn and McKayla are whispering and trying to look like they’re not looking at Aly and Mustafina, but Kyla realizes that something isn’t quite normal here.

“I hear one of you Russians stuck her landing and got a gold medal today,” Aly says, and if Kyla isn’t mistaken, she’s using a sort of teasing, friendly tone.

“Yes. She stuck badass landing.” And if she’s not mistaken, Mustafina is being really friendly too. Don’t the Russians kind of dislike them? “You are not going to store? I hear you like Russian things.”

“You heard that? How funny. I heard you like American things, too.”

There’s an undercurrent in this conversation, something that Kyla ponders briefly might be close to flirtation, but that’s such an impossible thought that she dismisses it right away.

She’s been staring at a nearby lamp post all this time, hoping no one would notice how odd this is, but this is when she finally risks a glance in the direction of the two girls on whose conversation she had been so shamelessly eavesdropping. And she frowns, because Mustafina is whispering something that she can’t catch, but it causes Aly to laugh. Then the Russian girl reaches out and tugs on the sleeve of Aly’s jacket, in a quick, discreet movement, and Aly doesn’t flinch or back away or act like the motion is foreign to her at all—are they friends? They begin to walk to the international store, and Aliya is still talking and Aly is still laughing, and Kyla can’t shake off the feeling that she just witnessed something strange happening, right before her eyes. She turns to Jordyn and McKayla behind her, and the way they’re letting their gazes follow the two girls inside is what finally tips off Kyla so she can understand it all; everyone noticed it before her, but now she’s caught up.

————-

The first time Viktoria Komova notices it, she’s equal parts disgusted and jealous. The first emotion is okay; Aliya clearly has no regard for all the rules they were brought up with regarding prohibited association with the competition, so Viktoria can feel disgust when she watches Aliya walk with Aly Raisman to the Russian section of the international store like this is allowed and normal. But the second emotion makes her feel guilty and a little sad, because one of her closest friends has the gold medal that eluded their country for so many years, the medal that everyone had expected her to win. And that teammate also seems to really, really like this Raisman person, who is American and therefore automatically unpleasant, but who also manages to seem quite kind and gracious and friendly.

Raisman is that girl who smiles at everyone like she knows she’ll be smiled back at, and who hugs competitors that have just bumped her out of the podium. And she’s also absurdly pretty and a good enough gymnast—fine, a great gymnast—so the half of Viktoria that rejects the mere idea of letting Raisman get anywhere near Aliya is fighting that other stubborn half that looks at the two and is confused but sort of glad, that if her teammate was going to get involved with an American, at least she chose the best of them.

—————

The first time McKayla notices it, she doesn’t want to notice. She rounds off the corner into the row that has the Romanian section and what she catches sight of makes her wish she had looked away, or sneezed at just the right time, or tripped over something and missed the entire scene that plays out in front of her.

It’s probably the intimacy that makes her breathing and her heart sort of halt; Aliya gives Aly a brownie-like cake and then goes on to laugh when Aly makes a vaguely revolted face at the taste. Aly slaps Aliya’s arm, which seems to only make the Russian girl laugh more, and then they’re both smirking and Aly’s eyes are gleaming like they do when she’s being taunted. This is when McKayla should have looked away, because this is when they both shift closer together, and then Mustafina is talking and smiling and pulling on Aly’s collar, and Aly is leaning forward, laughing, and pressing a quick kiss to Mustafina’s mouth before stepping back to snatch the wrapper from Mustafina’s hand. And then Aly is reading the wrapper with widened eyes and Mustafina is laughing and Aly’s slapping Aliya’s arm again, and McKayla is letting out a heavy breath because all it took was a trip to get ice; all it took were 10 minutes, and Aly belonged to the Russian girl.

———————

Aliya accompanies Aly back to the girl’s room, noticing her wearier-than-usual manner and deducing that all her training in preparation for tomorrow’s double-event competition has worn out the American. Once they step inside, Aliya notices Aly’s widened smile first, and then the flashing television mounted on the wall.

“Look, Aliya; you’re on.”

The Olympic channel at the Village runs recaps of recent competitions all day long, and it amuses Aliya when she sees footage and highlights of today’s uneven bars event; her dismount, her interactions with the other contenders, the podium, her medal…

“I love when you do that,” Aly comments behind her as the television shows footage of her exchanging a greeting with He Kexin. Aliya doesn’t quite understand what she’s talking about, and turns to her with a curious smile. “When you give people a thumbs-up. It’s cute.”

“I never give you thumb-up?”

“I don’t think you ever have,” Aly laughs, setting down her bags beside the door and sitting down on her bed.

Aliya watches with a smile as Aly lays down on her side, not bothering to take any of her clothing off. “You are very tired?”

“I think that during the last hour of training, my muscles were dying a very slow and painful death,” Aly mutters darkly, and Aliya is amused by the dramatics as much as she is by the girl’s moody expression.

“Where is control for television?”

“In the drawer, I think…” Aly mutters in reply, clearly already fighting sleep. Aliya makes her way over to the drawer, kneels down and tries to open it as quietly as possible, mentally cursing when she opens the top one and doesn’t see the remote control inside. She closes it carefully, darting another look at Aly’s still figure, noting that she’s rolled over onto her stomach and has stopped stirring, then opens the second drawer. The remote control is there.

And so is an English/Russian dictionary.

Aliya turns off the TV, noticing immediately that now that there is no noise in the room, all she can hear are her own heartbeats and Aly’s low breathing. She opens the dictionary with a smile, still in the midst of curious disbelief. The pages are loose and some are folded, which leads Aliya to deduce that it’s new but has been leafed through quite a few times. A small yellow sticky note poking out from the middle of the book catches her attention, and she turns the pages until she gets to the one bookmarked. And then her smile disappears and she swallows hard, even if what she wants to do is smile wider—so wide that her facial muscles might not be able to handle it. The sticky note has an arrow drawn in red pen that points to the entry in this dictionary for the word “ice” and its translation, “лед.” And right underneath the arrow is a smiley face and a heart.

She stares at the page for a few seconds, forgetting where she is and what she was doing. It’s futile to try to look away from that little heart on that little paper; futile to fight the pleasant sinking feeling in her stomach, and the electric shiver that runs through the entirety of her body. So she doesn’t move from her place, not at first. Once she thinks her heart might have settled into normal activity, she raises her gaze to the girl laying on the bed in front of her and her voice rings out sort of weakly.

“Aly, you are awake?”

The girl stirs, eyes still closed, and then Aliya hears a tiny sigh. “I don’t… know…” Her mumble is so low that Aliya barely catches it. She places the dictionary back inside the drawer and closes it gingerly, wincing when she thinks her grip might slip and she’ll accidentally slam it shut. Then she slides over to the bed, kneeling beside it.

“Aly…” she whispers, close to the girl’s face, and if she weren’t already so intoxicated by the flushed cheeks and the freckles and the slightly messy hair and the sleepy mumbles, she’d be distracted and her brain would be shutting down and she’d be deciding that she could spend the rest of her life staring. Aly lets out a quiet hum, and Aliya thinks her heart has slowed down almost to a stop. “You try to learn Russian?”

Aly’s eyes open just a tiny bit, and the languid gaze she gives Aliya is enough to make her stomach flip-flop almost violently, but she blinks them back closed and her reply is just as sleep-laden and mumbled as before. “I wanted to know what you whisper in my ear sometimes… when we’re together…”

There is a tiny, miniscule voice inside Aliya’s head that wants to remind the rest of her body that Aly is tired and almost dozing off. That voice, however, is completely trampled by everything else that speaks up; the strands and muscles in her heart telling her that they’ve never beat so strongly, her skin burning and itching because it’s been so long since Aly’s touched her, her stomach plummeting because it’s what it always does when the girl is close—and then there’s no room in her mind or her lungs or in her, at all, to do anything but give in and lean forward and kiss Aly, for just a long second, just long enough.

When she pulls back, Aly’s clouded, half-closed eyes are trained on her.

The words come out before Aliya even has time to think them through. “I say I like you very much, and like everything of you. I say I like your mouth, like your neck, like your eye… I say that you are very beautiful. Most beautiful I have seen. And I say other things, but do not know how to tell you in English.”

Everything settles back into a brand of silence that’s light and sort of hot and breathless; the one that’s begun to be theirs, and theirs alone, the one that floats between their faces as Aliya’s gaze locks with Aly’s and the things around them begin to blur and evaporate.

Aly speaks up, in a whisper. “I’m never getting over you, am I?” She pulls Aliya closer and kisses her again, and then maneuvers onto her back and tugs and pulls again on Aliya’s jacket until Aliya finds herself on top of the girl.

Aly deepens everything quickly, making it impossible for Aliya to breathe properly and to keep her hands from touching places she shouldn’t touch unless they’re actually going to do this—and the problem is that Aliya isn’t sure of whether Aly wants to do this, given that she’s tired and maybe her teammate will walk in at any minute. So she pulls back breathlessly, taking a second to organize her chaotic thoughts. “You are not tired?”

“You woke me up,” Aly replies with a small pant and a flushed smile. Immediately, and probably because her brain isn’t working well and her body is almost feverish, Aliya begins to rapidly remove her jacket. Aly releases a small laugh and then props herself up on an elbow, placing a hand on Aliya’s cheek, and kissing her again. It’s surprisingly soft and gentle and slow, and Aliya melts and loses herself in it quickly, completely forgetting about the jacket. “It’s okay, Aliya; we have time,” Aly murmurs against her lips.

“Maroney not coming here?” Aliya asks, mouth following Aly’s as the girl lies back down.

“Not until about 8.”

Aliya would have smiled, but Aly is kissing her again and she doesn’t stop until most of their clothing is lying in a pile by the bed, and she’s laughing softly and saying, “by the way, I hope your leo for tomorrow isn’t low-cut or anything.”

Aliya has to make an enormous effort to set aside some part of her brain to form words and reply to the girl, when said girl’s hands are wandering dangerously close to some very sensitive parts of her body. “Why you ask?”

“I have to give you something…” Aly pairs neck kisses with those damn hands that make her feel like her skin is on fire, and Aliya is pretty sure she won’t be able to say anything coherent for a while. “You gave it to me yesterday and now I have to return the favor.”


	11. To-Do (Part 1)

“ _ **I made a list… like a to-do list, for the things I think I need to do so I don’t fall apart when you’re not with me anymore.”**_

———–

“I think I’m going to get a tattoo after the Olympics.” Aliya’s shrug is a sign that she either doesn’t like the idea, or doesn’t like that Aly paused the trail of soft kisses she was forging as she made her way from the girl’s shoulder to her neck. “Alicia Sacramone—yeah, the one you’re thinking of—has a few and they look really good. I want an Olympic-themed one, like the one she has on the back of her neck.”

Aly drops a few more kisses along the girl’s jaw, then moves in for the mouth, but before she gets there, Aliya asks with interest, “where you want to get tattoo?”

“Maybe on my wrist… I’m not sure yet.” Aliya rolls onto her side, facing Aly, then gently takes Aly’s arm and holds it between them, turning it over for inspection. “You don’t think it’s a good place?”

“No, I like idea.” Aliya presses a kiss to her wrist area that seems to burn the skin covering it, and as Aly feels her breathing hitch slightly at the sensation, she ponders briefly that Aliya’s already sort of tattooed her entire body with hickeys and tiny bruises and marks. It’s strangely satisfying to take a glance at her naked body—or Aliya's—and retrace all the kisses and little bites by the evidence they left behind. Thank God for make-up and the fact that their leos for tomorrow’s finals won’t be transparent.

“Maybe you can get a tattoo too,” Aly begins with a smirk, watching Aliya pick up on her teasing tone, liking that they can read one another so well now. “I think you’d look great with a little American flag somewhere on your body.”

“I die first.”

The girl’s solemn response makes Aly burst into laughter, and she can’t resist the urge to kiss Aliya again, before pulling back and continuing, “you sure? It’d look really sexy on you.”

“Yes, I am sure.” Aly is pleasantly, excitedly surprised when Aliya maneuvers around the bed and onto her body, straddling her with a smug grin. “But I believe Russia tattoo look very good on you.” She reaches into her backpack, lying close by on the floor beside the bed, and Aly has to laugh again when she pulls out a marker, probably the one she, like every gymnast, carries around to label her equipment. “I give you good tattoo.”

“Fine, but not anywhere my friends will see, please. They already get on my case enough without having a Federation flag drawn on me,” Aly tells with amusement as she watches the Russian girl bend down and press the cold marker to her ribcage area, on her side and just below her chest. “You’re not drawing… you’re writing, aren’t you?” Aliya’s eyes remain on her ribs but her grin widens while she visibly concentrates on her work—that is definitely not a good sign. “Tell me it’s not something horrible like ‘I love Russia’ or 'Aliya Mustafina is the boss of me’ or something…”

“Nyet,” Aliya replies with obvious satisfaction upon completion of her task, sitting up and closing the marking pen. “I give you perfect tattoo. You will like.”

Aly has to sort of contort her body in order to see what looks to be a single word, and even then it’s upside down—and in Russian, of course. There’s no hope in figuring out what that means, so she lies back and sighs dramatically. “You’re not going to translate that for me, are you?”

“Nyet,” Aliya tells her again with a haughty laugh, and then leans down to kiss her again. The familiar rush of warmth that Aly feels in the pit of her stomach tempts her to let her hands wander to their favorite places on Aliya’s body, and it’s almost impossible to remain still and quiet when Aliya’s fingers press into her sides and nails dig into her shivering skin and every inch of her seems to tingle and throb and call out, _touchmetouchmetouchme_. Aly wonders if Aliya knows the sort of heady, intoxicating effect she’s having on her, and how odd it is to feel like the only source of air in the room is Aliya’s mouth.

But it’s some faint noise from the hallway that pulls her attention from Aliya and reminds her that it’s almost 8pm, and McKayla and the others are probably on their way back to the Village after watching the men’s sprint final. And it’s almost like Aliya’s thoughts follow the same path as hers, because she pulls back and says with a breathless nod, “I go now. You wake up early for beam competition. I come here and wish you luck tomorrow.”

Aly immediately sits up and shakes her head, having to brush aside the still-simmering lust-filled thoughts that flush down her limbs the minute her body registers once again how close it is to Aliya's—who is, she notes with a small gulp, still very much naked. “No, I don’t want you to wake up early for me. If you want to help out Komova or Afanasyeva, that’s fine, but not for me. I want you to get your rest. Rest this,” she says, placing a hand on the girl’s left knee, “and I’ll see you at warm-ups before the floor final.” Aliya gives her a beaming smile that warms Aly, and her heart feels like it’s shaking inside her chest. Her next words are whispered as she hugs the girl a little closer. “I’m going to find out what that word means and then if it’s something bad I’ll make you drink American sodas with me.”

“It is not bad.” Aliya leans down and lays her head on Aly’s shoulder, close enough to her neck that she feels a pleasant shiver when the girl adds calmly, “I hope it is true.”

Later, Aly takes a picture of the tattoo and while she showers before getting ready for bed and watches the ink wash away from her skin, she thinks about her routines, about competing against Gabby on beam and then, on floor, against both Jordyn and Aliya—and then her thoughts linger on the Russian, and that’s when she stops worrying about her performance tomorrow and instead, finds herself figuring out ways to get that tattoo translated.

———————–

“ _ **One of them, for an example, is: I will try not to think of you so much throughout the day.”**_

———————-

It’s odd that right after being awarded the bronze medal for beam, Aly’s first thought is a question: why didn’t she remember that Nastia speaks Russian?

It’s even odder that yes, she’s overjoyed for her win (it still hasn’t quite sunk in, actually), and relieved that for once, a tiebreaker went her way, but then she’s trying to hurry through the post-medal ceremony interviews, which happen as the men have their horizontal bar final, in order to make it to Team USA’s waiting area at the Arena’s lobby, where Nastia Liukin is usually stationed.

“Hey Nastia,” she greets excitedly once she finally spots and approaches the blond.

“Oh my God, Aly; congrats!” Aly appreciates the enthusiastic, proud hug—she really does—but warm-ups for floor are in about ten minutes and she doesn’t have time to—“aren’t you supposed to be warming up already for floor?”

THANK THE LORD she understands. “Yes, I do, but I need you translate something for me if you can,” Aly explains hurriedly, fishing out her phone from her backpack to display the picture she had taken the day before. “What does this word mean?”

Nastia understands her lack of time to spare, but it apparently doesn’t keep her from delaying things even further when she asks with confusion, “is this on you? Did you get a tattoo in Russian?”

“It’s not a tattoo and it’s a long story,” Aly responds, trying her best not to display any impatience. “I’m just really curious.”

“ _I hope it is true.”_

“Well, it’s like a possessive pronoun, I think.”

Aly stares blankly at Nastia’s calm figure, waiting for a follow-up to that not-at-all-helpful explanation. Her breathing is slowing down and her heartbeats are calmer now that she’s stopped running from place to place, but at the mere thought of seeing Aliya again in a few minutes, every organ in her body heats up.

“ _I hope it is true.”_

“You know, in a sentence there’d be another way of writing that,” Nastia finally continues, handing Aly back her phone, and shrugging. Aly’s lungs pause their function, just as she sort of unconsciously braces herself. “But the way it is, it just means 'mine.'”

————————

“ _ **Also, this one: I will not make it so obvious to everyone around me that I like you.”**_

———————–

Aly’s bronze medal win on beam almost makes Aliya feel better about the disappointment that it was to watch both Vika and Ksenia fail to medal for Russia. She stretches in split position and glances at the large clock hanging on a wall nearby; they are scheduled to enter the Arena in about twenty minutes. Aliya breathes deeply, glancing around and studying the surrounding athletes. Nothing in gymnastics is ever certain, but she doesn’t forget that she has the lowest qualifying score among all the gymnasts that will perform today and is therefore not likely to even be in the top 5 at the end. It’s surprising, even, that she qualified, seeing as how floor was never one of the events she was supposed to compete in; her D-score isn’t really that high, and Anastasia had been the preferred pick to join Ksenia.

Aly, of course, is the top qualifier, and yes—the sport is unpredictable because _nerves_ are unpredictable—but she’s highly favored to win and has, by far, the highest D-score. So Aliya believes and hopes and even sort of prays inside her heart, that Aly will at least medal today. Aliya will do her best and Ksenia, being the better Russian in this competition, needs to win gold, but Aly _will_ medal.

She repeats it in her mind, closing her eyes to listen to her own breathing: Aly will medal. Aly will medal.

“Hi.”

Aliya’s eyes fly open and she’s already smiling and blushing before she even sees the American in front of her. “Hello. Congratulations on win today.”

In between smoothing down a wave of longing washing through her body, Aliya notices it in a brief instant; something in the way Aly is watching her, and the way she’s smiling gingerly—something is off, sort of. There’s usually a glint in her eye when she’s about to surprise her with a teasing joke, but this looks different than when she’s up to something.

“Thanks,” the girl replies quietly. “I’ll go stretch soon, but I just had to tell you something.” Aly kneels down in front of her and Aliya pauses her stretching, frowning because a few other gymnasts (including Jordyn Wieber) are watching them with puzzlement and even _she_ isn’t sure of what Aly is doing, opening the front of her USA jacket as though performing an important task. “I didn’t like that tattoo you gave me,” she comments off-handedly, and this is when Aliya tenses, because Aly isn’t meeting her eye; she’s concentrating on removing her left arm from inside the jacket. “So I got another one. I hope you don’t mind.”

Aliya is wondering how she should respond to Aly’s statement, seeing as how, now that she’s thinking about it, she wrote something sort of… achingly personal on her ribs yesterday, something that feels now like it might have put her in a frail position. _I hope it is true_ , is what she said, so she admitted that she wished Aly was hers; really hers, and only hers.

She’s about to tell Aly that of course she doesn’t mind that she didn’t like what she wrote on her; it maybe, kind of, meant to something to Aliya, but it didn’t have to mean anything to her. It was just marker, and those things wash away.

But then Aly rolls up the sleeve of her leotard, and reveals a forearm upon which, etched in the same sort of marker Aliya had used yesterday to write that little Russian word on Aly’s ribs, is another little Russian word.

_Yours._

Aliya looks up from the ink to its carrier, all sorts of painful flutters in her chest making it difficult to breathe or move, and making her realize that sometimes a heart can beat so strongly that it hurts.

“It’s true.” Aly smiles gently, and the nervousness and hesitation all make sense now. In that moment, Aliya begins to recognize a strange sort of security woven through her being; the feeling that she can say these things to Aly—that she wants to belong to her, and wants to see her all the time, and can’t imagine how things are going to be without her—because Aly is walking down the same path with her, sharing the same heartbeats. Then, true to how she is, and how their interactions are shaped, Aly widens her grin and whispers, “and I thought you knew this already.”

————————-

It’s not Ksenia’s day. It really isn’t. Her beam is barely decent; she doesn’t medal, but she also doesn’t have meltdown, unlike Vika. She doesn’t really put up a good fight for her world floor title, either. The moment she registers, a millisecond after landing her first tumbling pass, that she’s just too off-balance to do anything but step out of bounds in order to remain upright, she understands that this is the last competition on their last day in the Olympics, and she’s leaving without an individual medal. The rest of the routine is like swimming through the ripples on a disturbed lake; it’s all about navigating the aftershock.

While she waits for her score, Aliya warms up. So does Aly Raisman, a few feet away. They do a marvelous job of keeping within each other’s line of sight without making that blatantly obvious. Ksenia wonders how this relationship works—how Aliya can become so nervous for an American rival, to where she kind of stops what she’s doing when Jordyn Wieber finishes her routine and Raisman approaches the mat to position herself for her turn while her compatriot’s score is evaluated.

It turns out that this isn’t Wieber’s day, either. But it is Raisman’s. It’s almost awe-inspiring, in the most disappointing way, how thoroughly Raisman sets the bar for the floor competition once the final note of her musical track echoes through the Arena. Her score is unheard of, because her D-score is so amazingly high and her execution was damn near flawless, even if it lacks all the artistic polish that Ksenia thinks would have made the girl’s routine perfect. She’s oscillating between admiring the girl for her achievement, and resenting her for that exact reason, and that’s when she turns to Aliya, forgetting the sort of bond her teammate has with the American. Her intended comment on the new code of points doesn’t leave her lips because she catches sight of a flash of _something_ in Aliya’s eyes—feelings upon feelings upon feelings that Ksenia never thought she’d see, not in this context, and not from this specific teammate. But it’s all there and she just thanks God that at least Aliya isn’t downright smiling.

Aliya stays in their corner while Aly celebrates her performance with her coach, and when Ksenia thinks they’re not going to cross paths again—because now Raisman has an actual score that Aliya will try to beat, of course, and that has to be awkward for them—she sits beside Aliya and accepts her consoling words and hugs. It’s odd to register how calm Aliya is at the moment. Instead of exhaustion, which she must have plenty of, seeing as how she’s performed in the most events throughout the Games, Aliya displays tranquil happiness. Instead of being nervous, she announces as her name comes up for her turn after Ferrarri, that she’s going to “dance for a little bit” and will be right back.

Everything that follows is a series of insteads.

Instead of walking back to her team’s waiting area to join Wieber and watch the remaining competitors from there, Aly Raisman picks a place by the floor mat, just beside where the unused beam is, and stays put throughout the entirety of Aliya’s routine.

Instead of just “dancing for a bit,” Aliya sticks her landings and soars in her tumbles and Ksenia doesn’t see anything but one small hop betray the aching knee.

Instead of walking off the mat and heading to her left, where the Russian corner is, Aliya walks on the right side of the passageway, where Aly Raisman stands, waiting for her.

Instead of minding Alexandr’s presence, and instead of trading congratulatory nods or shaking hands, Aly Raisman and Aliya hug tightly, and Ksenia watches her teammate smile so widely that she wonders how many cameras are catching this, and how many millions of people are seeing this as well.

And instead of walking away once they part, Aliya turns back, and, still grinning, gives a surprised Aly Raisman a thumbs-up, and judging by the way she blushes and almost laughs, that gesture meant something more than the obvious western congratulatory sign. And there it is again—a glimpse of a world they created for themselves, a place no one else has been invited to. Aliya is then heading in her direction by footsteps that are light and free and remind Ksenia of when her teammate didn’t have an injured knee and hadn’t faced defeat yet, and still thought everything in the world was in its place.

She frowns when she remembers what it was about that conversation after the team finals that stuck with her, because it caused her so much concern. And now it doesn’t anymore.

_“You’re not worried? About losing focus?”_

_“No. I focus better when I’m happy.”_

——————-

“ _ **I also put here; I will not think about our goodbye.”**_

——————

“When my telephone not with me, and you call on house telephone, mother will answer. Or if I am in training base, one of trainers will answer. You say, 'mogu ya pogovoritʹs Aliya’ and they will tell me I have telephone call.” It’s impossible for Aliya not to laugh at Aly’s thinly-veiled horror.

“ _What?_ How in the world am I going to say all that? Mah-goo what?”

“Mogu ya pogovoritʹs Aliya.”

Once the floor final was over, the post-competition press rounds were finished, the team parties were conducted, and it was already 11pm and everyone was still up and celebrating, Aly and Aliya found out that the only place they could spend any time together before Aliya’s homeward flight the next morning is Aly’s room. They quickly realized and came to terms with the fact that nothing can really happen—Maroney and the rest of the American team are right next door, and these walls aren’t exactly soundproof. And at first Aliya thought this is all right; at least she gets to be with Aly for a few more hours, and talk to her and memorize the sound of her laugh and the exact placement of her freckles on her nose and cheeks, and she can store these things within her for when they’re thousands of kilometers away and heart starts to feel like it’s shriveling.

It’s fun, also, to go over the floor final with Aly. It’s strangely overwhelming for Aliya to see how proud Aly is of her performance, and even through her own happiness with the gold medal, Aly still examines her bronze medal with awe and an enormous smile that makes Aliya feel as though she’s melting and dissolving into a puddle at the girl’s feet.

And the first kiss they share is supposed to be quick but might as well have been an atomic explosion because it sets Aliya’s body ablaze, and it’s so, so difficult to step away and agree with Aly that they should probably keep their distance for now; at least until they have an epiphany and can think of another place to go to.

They sit on opposite sides of Aly’s bed, and it does take a long measure of time for Aliya to stop replaying in her mind all the memories she has linked to this bed, but then they’re talking about how Aly can call her in Russia, and it startles Aliya—in a hilarious, heartwarming way—how terrible Aly’s Russian still is.

“That is impossible to say. Come on,” Aly argues with a funny sort of frustration. “Please tell me there’s a simpler way to say that, or that someone at Lake Krugloye speaks English.”

“I teach you word by word, and maybe you say it better,” Aliya offers instead. She shifts on the bed just to sit up a little straighter, but her knee brushes against Aly’s leg and she has to set aside a moment to smother down the flare of desire that instantly erupts inside her. When her eyes meet Aly’s again, she sees Aly perform the same motions, trying to be all right with this distance, already planning to be more careful next time they move so they don’t touch.

The problem turns out not to be limited to touching. Because every time Aly laughs, blushes, and rolls her eyes, Aliya feels a painful, almost overwhelming tug in her gut, a little voice reminding her of how used she’s become to the effervescent high Aly injects into her veins every time they’re close. And good God, she’s really addicted.

“Okay, you said that 'o’ has a closed sound. Why aren’t you saying it with a closed sound?”

“I say it with closed sound. You are one not saying word right.”

Aly releases a groan of annoyance and covers her face with her hands. The muffled quality of her voice only makes it funnier when she goes on to bemoan, “I need like, a medal or something that I can win so I can get encouraged to learn this, because your language is just a nightmare.”

In a second, the part of Aliya that is constantly tempting her to reach out and touch Aly, or just settle for a longer look that will allow her to appreciate the curves and the softness that she’s become so acquainted with—that part makes Aliya blurt out, “I give you something better than medal if you say words right.” Aly lowers her hands, and the curious smile she displays is enough to make Aliya’s heart rate a bit more erratic. Control yourself. You can’t do anything here. “I kiss you if you say word right.”

This is dangerous, right? Kissing is dangerous. Aliya’s kissed a few people, a number good enough that she thinks she can say with confidence that Aly’s mouth is some sort of terribly effective drug that makes it too easy to throw caution aside in favor of more, more, more.

“That _is_ better than a medal,” Aly chuckles, and Aliya has to smile with satisfaction when the girl’s gaze wanders to her mouth and she quickly swallows hard and tries to look away. “So… closed 'o’ sound, right?”

Aly is still terrible, but Aliya’s proposition hangs heavily in the air, and somehow starts to create a sort of gravitational field between them. Aliya senses it when she notices that she can’t quite take her eyes off Aly’s lips; something seems to be physically pulling her to Aly, and it’s kind of baffling that she has to fight so strongly against it just to keep herself in this conversation.

“Okay; say it again so I can listen to it?”

Aly takes off her jacket distractedly and Aliya almost panics—it’s getting worse. That, or the room really did shrink and get hotter all of a sudden.

Aly shakes her head with a confused frown and bites her lip and gathers her long hair onto her right shoulder, and Aliya thinks she can’t really move now; it’s getting so hard to fight her body that she becomes certain of one thing: if Aly just happens to touch her, she’ll probably burst into flames.

She makes the mistake of watching Aly’s mouth intently, initially to try to pinpoint where, exactly, the girl is going wrong when she’s trying to pronounce “pogovoritʹs.” But then her attention is hopelessly caught by the lips and all the memories that splash inside her mind like waves crashing against rock—these lips whose taste and texture she’s committed to heart and felt across the limbs of her body, these lips she’s sucked on and nibbled on and these lips that she really, really wishes were pressed against hers right now.

“Try easy word now,” Aliya says softly, taking Aly by surprise.

“You’re giving up on me already?”

“No,” Aliya murmurs. “But want very much to kiss you and you say all words wrong.”

Aly’s laughs and giggles are usually contagious, but this one isn’t due to the jolt of awareness that surges through Aliya the moment she notices Aly shifting closer to her.

“I’ll mess up the easy word, too,” Aly whispers, and now she’s so close that Aliya instinctively grabs the sheets beside her just to keep herself in place. “So you don’t have to kiss me. I’ll kiss you.”

She leans over Aliya’s seated figure but doesn’t go for the mouth right away; first her lips are on her cheek, then on her jaw, and as they get progressively lower and hotter, Aliya remembers the whole point of having held back this whole time—they’re not supposed to be doing this. They can’t do anything because the team from America is next door. Which means Aly is robbing her of her breath and her sanity and doesn’t actually plan on taking things any further.

As difficult as it is to think clearly when Aly’s lips are on her neck, Aliya does manage to speak up, however faintly and hoarsely. “Aly… you cannot say I tease, because you tease more.” She’s going to add that unless they find another room or corner of this hotel that’s either isolated or has soundproof walls, she’s going to have to tell Aly to step away. And she even opens her mouth to begin that sentence, but that’s when she feels Aly suck on the skin just above her jugular, and then all hope for clear-headedness is gone in favor of a feverish, barely coherent brain that makes her raise her hands to the girl’s side, to run her fingers over the bare skin underneath her shirt. She’s not thinking right; she’s trying to stop this, because she’s so close to losing control, and yet she’s touching Aly in all the ways that she likes, in the spots she’s learned are especially sensitive. She feels Aly shivering and knows that if the girl’s lips make their way to her own, then she’ll definitely lose this battle.

And that’s exactly what happens. Aly shifts onto her lap, weaves her hands and arms around her neck, and leans in instinctively, and while Aliya takes a fast moment to brace herself for a kiss, she’s most certainly not prepared for this kind of kissing—so deep and wet and breathless that she starts to feel a bit light-headed. She wants this too much, and she’s just not strong enough to keep resisting this.

“Aly,” she whispers against the girl’s lips, almost losing her train of thought when one of Aly’s hands begins to move up from her stomach to her breast. “If we not going to do anything, then please stop.”

Aly pulls back, and it’s strangely exciting to see that the girl is just as consumed and affected by this as she is. Aliya watches her lick her lips then lean forward just a centimeter, before apparently reconsidering it. “Okay,” she breathes out unsteadily. “We can stop.”

“Okay,” Aliya repeats automatically, but her eyes wander from the flare in Aly’s eyes to the swollen lips and the half-exposed chest and she swallows hard, hoping her hammering heart slows down for just long enough for her to regain her breath and composure. But every centimeter of her skin burns with the recent memory of Aly’s fingers and mouth, and it’s not easy to fight against throbbing muscles and bones and a mind that won’t stop thinking about how good this feels, and how much better it will feel if they just give in already, if she could just touch and kiss certain places. “Okay.” And she doesn’t even know why she bothers saying that again, when all she’s going to do is lean forward and crash her lips onto Aly’s, and shift and move so that she pins the girl down and sighs with appreciation when the hands whose touch she’s begun to know so well begin to pull her shirt over her head.

“Aliya,” Aly calls out faintly, sounding a little desperate, “you can be quiet, right?”

“Yes,” Aliya responds, trying very hard not to pant too loudly now that Aly has removed her own shirt and is working on her bra. “If you go slow, yes.”

“We can do slow,” Aly agrees breathlessly, releasing a little gasp when Aliya returns her earlier gesture and begins to kiss and suck on her neck. Clothes are off within a portion of a minute and Aliya is unbelievably relieved when she thinks that Aly will actually stick to their agreement and take things a little slower than their usual, because that’s the only way she might have a chance to control her reactions.

But patience is one of those qualities that, as Aliya has learned, Aly just doesn’t seem to possess, and that’s what probably makes her roll them over so she can be on top, and just as Aliya is sort of wondering whether it’s just her, or are they not going slow at all, Aly’s fingers and mouth and wicked tongue instantly engulf her body in throbbing fire and make it impossible for her to keep a somewhat loud moan and a Russian curse word from escaping her.

“I thought you said you could be quiet,” Aly whispers immediately, and Aliya would be really annoyed by her small laugh if they weren’t, you know, in the middle of something.

She looks down at Aly’s smirking, smug figure and wonders whether it’d be too violent—too “Russian” as the American girl says—if she hit her head with her knee. “You say you going to be slow, and not going slow.”

Her reprehension only seems to amuse Aly. “This is slow. You just really don’t know how to keep it down.” She laughs again, probably because a few of her hand movements make Aliya breathe heavily, having to force her mind to stay on their conversation. “But that’s okay. I guess I’m just that good.”

Aliya wants to argue. She really does, because Aly makes verbal sparring fun and also because the girl is wrong, and she can totally be quiet. But then she’s glad that she never got a chance to argue back; she’s glad Aly resumed her activities and the world is melting, the sheets are ablaze and the room is on fire and she just cannot breathe—she’s glad because now that she thinks about it, Aly is most likely right, and Aliya would hate to argue against all this evidence.

—————

“ _ **I will not cry when you leave.”**_

————–

“When I wake up, you’re already going to be on your flight back,” Aly mumbles, and Aliya almost stops the kisses she’s been pressing on the girl’s shoulder, just to hug the girl instead.

“Yes. I get to Moscow after 12 hour flight. You call me then?”

“You should call me first, actually,” Aly says, turning over onto her back and facing Aliya with a teasing smirk. “You did everything first so you might as well.”

“What I do first?”

“You talked to me first,” Aly points out confidently, and Aliya frowns a bit before remembering—she did indeed sort of start the conversation inside the ice room.

But that doesn’t mean she did _everything_ first. "You hug me first.”

Maybe Aly notices that Aliya isn’t backing down, because her next retort emerges accompanied by a laugh. “Fine. But you kissed me first. In the international store.” Aliya remembers that so clearly that the mere mention of the incident makes her blush. At least Aly is blushing, too. And she adds, “oh—on the cheek _and_ on the mouth. You kissed me first on both. It was all you.“

Her stomach contorts and her heart feels like it’s being squeezed, and she’s going to miss this feeling _so much_ , of being this close to someone that every part of her body and mind has grown dependent on. "Okay,” she feigns defeat. Then deals what she believes will be the victorious final blow. “But you take clothes off first.”

Aly’s mouth drops with scandal, and her laugh now is one of pure embarrassment. Aliya can almost see the girl replaying the events of their first time together in her mind. “Oh, that’s low. Aliya Mustafina, you play dirty.”

“I play fair,” Aliya smirks in response, then feels a grinning Aly pull on her neck for a heady, lingering kiss.

“If I didn’t love you I’d be super mad that you make me sound so easy,” Aly murmurs against her lips.

Aliya used to have to run English sentences in her mind over and over again, to make sure her underdeveloped knowledge of the language wasn’t keeping her from understanding everything correctly. Once she began to spend time with Aly, however, she was able to turn that off because it was all right to misunderstand things with her; she could explain confusing words to her, and she suspects that Aly even began to adapt to the language difference by simplifying her sentences.

But that habit of running sentences in her mind kicks back in at this moment, when she’s sure that she can’t have heard things right, that maybe she imagined it, or maybe the meaning of her words is different than she’s intepreting.

“You okay?” Aly asks softly, tracing the line of her cheek and jaw with her fingers.

And Aliya wants to be more composed about this, and think about her response a bit more, but instead, all she’s able to blurt out is, “you say it first.”

“Say what first?”

She’s already stumbled over her words last time she opened her mouth, so Aliya hesitates to answer. This, however, gives Aly enough time to trace back the conversation. Aliya watches the girl intently, wanting so badly for her to confirm it, and not apologize for using the incorrect term.

“Yeah… I did say it first.” Aly’s voice isn’t any stronger than before. If anything, it’s dropped down to a whisper. “Are you… planning on saying anything back?”

In that moment, Aliya is consumed by the strangest fear she’s known in her life. For all her years she’s had to live alone, and be content to fend for herself, and all her life she’s trekked through her path without relying on anyone, without having a safe place to land, someone she could turn to if the world got to be too much. But in that moment, that foreign brand of fear takes over, burns her until she’s inwardly hissing; she knows now what it’s like to lean on someone, and in these past few days she’s started something that isn’t going to go away. She knows what it’s like now to look beside her and see someone there, someone who’s witnessing what she’s doing, someone who can tell the world about who she was, inside, if everyone forgets. And this feeling is going to stay with her; it won’t disappear when she boards her plane back to Russia, and it won’t disappear no matter how many times she tries to bury it or forget it—it’s going to stay in her system, and every time she’s alone, instead of walking on ahead without caring, she’ll care, and she’ll remember that there was once, for just a week, a hand she could hold, that tethered her to the rest of the world so she wouldn’t be looked at as just an injured knee, that dead limb in the tree, that was always about to be cut off.

There is fear, yes, that every moment after she exits this room is going to be torture. But there is everything else too—gratefulness, happiness, and love.

This is the best she’s ever felt in her life.

“If I say in Russian, I say it first also.”

“Okay,” Aly agrees excitedly, a bubbly giggle making the room seem a lot hazier than it is. “How do you say it in Russian?”

“Ya tebya lyublyu, Aly.”

“I’m going to say that to you one day. And I promise I won’t be too awful.”

——————–

“ _ **I wish to use your list also. So we do same things to feel better.”**_

———————-

McKayla is startled when she opens the door in the morning and immediately catches sight of Aliya Mustafina, kneeling by Aly’s bed. She was apparently bookmarking some pages in Aly’s Russian dictionary—the one she thinks no one knows about—but when she comes in, Mustafina slowly places the dictionary on the bed, just beside Aly’s pillow. Of course Mustafina would be careful not to wake Aly, but this simple act betrays the kind of gentleness that McKayla just isn’t ready to associate with the Russian girl. It’s better to continue seeing her as the bitchy, moody gymnast who marches inside the arena like everything was built for her.

Mustafina picks up her backpack from the floor and steps around McKayla, heading for the door. McKayla is just about to deduce that the Russian isn’t going to say a word to her, when suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she sees her motion her over, outside of the room. For some reason she can’t figure out, McKayla doesn’t think twice before following the girl outside, and shutting the door quietly behind her.

This is really, really odd. Outside of the death glares and the mildly condescending gazes, Mustafina is about as perfect-looking as a human being can be. And knowing what she means to Aly, and how close they are, and the things they’ve done—in the room she shares with her, nonetheless; eew—it just doesn’t sink in for McKayla that Mustafina is actually in front of her, wanting to talk.

“Aly… I like very, very much.” McKayla hasn’t heard Mustafina speak very often, so the accent and the gravity and sincerity of her tone catch her off-guard. “I know you close friend. After Olympics, I not see her for long time. Will miss her very much.” Suddenly, McKayla wants to walk away. Mustafina isn’t supposed to be like this; she’s not supposed to show any pain. “Will not… have chance, take care of Aly. You take care of her? Please?”

Why…

“Yes. I’ll take care of her.” Her voice is hollow and she feels like her body is a little shell filtering harsh winds, but these aren’t things she wants Mustafina to be aware of, so she pulls her armor back together and continues, “I wish I could hate you, you know. I have reasons to. But she likes you so much that I can’t.”

To her credit, Mustafina doesn’t seem to derive any happiness from her admission. All she gives her is slow, understanding nod. “Thank you, Maroonee.”

When she steps back into the room, the first thing McKayla does is head for the dictionary. She’s cautious of Aly’s sleeping figure, and is grateful that all it takes is a few turning of pages to piece together the message that Mustafina left: three numbered post-its, stuck to three pages of the dictionary. Each one has an arrow pointing to a word in the page bookmarked, and underneath each arrow is a smiley face and a heart. The three Russian words are strange, of course—McKayla has never really examined Cyrillic writing. But this is a dictionary, and all she has to do is look at the translations.

So that explains it. Aly is going to learn how to say “I love you” in Russian.


	12. To-Do (Part 2)

Aly’s list… she asked for an exact copy of it, but she doesn’t like it at first. She’s reading it over and over again on the taxi ride to the airport, and then while they check-in for their flight. She reads it while everyone else is taking their last pictures on London soil. And she reads it again when she’s inside the airplane, finally sitting down.

She’s memorized every letter that follows each bullet-point, so she begins to pay attention to other things while she stares at the list: Aly’s loopy writing, the way her pen seems to have paused on certain words because the ink is heavier, the way she folded the paper in an odd way— _“do left-handed people open things differently? Okay, well, I had good intentions when I did this”_ —but her mind wanders back to the contents of this list, because… Aly made a _list_. She made a list of things to do to feel better about their separation, and it’s just…

There’s a point here that Aly probably meant to highlight, because it’s underlined and even the letters are a little larger; it says “I will not cry when you leave” but Aliya decides to cheat and excuse herself from this, telling herself that she can cry because she’s the one leaving. She slumps down on her seat, buries her face inside her hands, and allows one long, drawn-out breath to escape her. Each of her eyes is pooled in tears that await for their turn to jump out into the world, and she wonders how she could have cried over small, frustrating things like a fall off the beam during practice, when there are so many worse feelings to cry over, like the possibility of never seeing again someone whose voice and body have become as familiar to you as your own heartbeat.

Twelve hours. Wait twelve hours and call her.

——————–

Aly has never talked so much in her life. Everyone on Team USA was given a handbook during their media training that contains an inventory of approved responses for the most common questions they would be asked in interviews. And since she memorized its contents, she’s never had to come up with an entirely original answer. Her words, however, sound hollow and false to her own ears, because the Olympics ended up being so much more than a collection of competitions, so much more than a week and a half of grueling gymnastics, and even more than just the best period of her life.

The part of all this that makes her sigh and stare into her hands and train a forced smile is that when she’s asked about the Games, she can’t be honest and true. She can’t speak directly from her heart and mind; she has to filter everything that comes out of her, because it’d be weird to say, “I like the medals and liked the experience, but I _loved_ someone, and I didn’t get to take that someone home with me when the Olympics were over.” So she has to settle for the generic answers that express her appreciation and how honored she was to have represented her country.

The interviews begin to blur together and the questions and press representatives become indistinguishable from one another, and Aly numbly conforms to the schedule, to the demands, to all the tasks she now has to perform that are so far removed from where she came from. But when she thinks about when all of this will end, she can’t quite be happy because this is the last remnant of the Olympics in her life. And once this is over, she’s going to have to go back to who she was before she boarded that plane to London, and—this is what gives her headaches and makes her bones ache and makes her pull out that list from her pocket—she’ll have to go back to being that girl who didn’t know how to say “ice” in Russian.

She hasn’t cried yet, and she hangs on to that feat like it’s her greatest accomplishment since she arrived in her home soil.

One day, she decides to grab a pen and add another entry to that list.

“ _ **I won’t think of you every time I have to talk about the Olympics.”**_

——————–

“ _ **I won’t listen to your floor music so I can go to sleep.”**_

For some reason, she’s asked about the American team a surprising number of times. The first time catches Aliya off-guard; were they rude? How rude? She navigates the mess in her mind apprehensively—she didn’t really brace herself for this. She blurts out that they weren’t rude, struggling to make up a good answer as she’s going along; that Maroney was a bit unpleasant after the vault final, and yes, Maria was a bit taken aback, but Raisman—and the name makes her gulp and fear that her voice will crack, or her hands will shake— _Raisman_ was always really nice, and the best competitor.

She glances at her phone distractedly, and while the interviewer is going on again about her historic gold medal win on the uneven bars and how that must have felt so incredible, her eyes zoom in on the little envelope icon that indicates that she has a new email. As much as she wants to read it right away, she can’t risk jeopardizing her composure in front of so many people who are under the silly impression that she’s some sort of super woman.

Later, when everything is done and she’s waiting for her ride back to her temporary location, Aliya reads two words and a sad face and automatically her fingers search for the girl’s contact entry, as they have just barely eased into doing.

“Dobroye utro, Aly,” she greets breathlessly, sitting down now because her legs aren’t going to function well when the girl’s voice sounds out from the speakers.

She hears a low, hushed laugh, and she’s _so_ glad she sat down. _“It’s not morning here, Aliya.”_

Right. Stupid 9-hour time difference. “It is late in America?”

“ _It’s eleven at night right now… I was just about to go to sleep.”_ She sounds a bit drowsy, now that she’s noticing it. _“This bus, though… it’s so noisy.”_

The bus. The bus that’s transporting Aly from city to city for the idiotic exhibition tour that she’s having to participate in as part of her sponsorship contract. America is such an odd nation. “Sorry I call late. Only read your email right now,” she explains, registering distantly that she’s playing with the zipper in her jacket. The sun’s rays are so bright today that anyone would think this is a warm morning, but it isn’t. “You say you miss me today…” Her heart and her stomach begin their usual conflict, twisting and turning and making her wish she could control this part of her, because it hurts more than it feels good. “I miss you also.” There’s what sounds like a soft sigh coming from the other end, and Aliya rushes to continue talking because she really, really doesn’t want to hear something that’s going to feel like a dagger being buried into her chest. “Hard for me to sleep yesterday so I listen to your music for floor exercise.”

A chuckle. Much better. _“Did it help?”_

“Yes.”

“ _I’m glad my floor track can put you to sleep,”_ Aly comments, chuckle expanding into laughter. _“I was listening to yours all the time, on loop, a few days ago. But that part where the woman starts wailing just kind of scares me every time.”_

“You offend me,” Aliya states solemnly, imagining that if they were actually face-to-face Aly would be blushing, and apologizing, and then rolling her eyes once it became clear that this was a joke. “My music very good….” She’s going to break this zipper, and then she’ll have tears in her eyes but at least everyone will think it’s because of the damaged jacket. “But I hear your music before sleep, and then dream with you, so, not good for me.”

There’s a pause, and then inside of her, a distinct sensation that she’s saying things that are hurting Aly.

“ _Where are you right now?”_ Her voice is very faint, and Aliya’s not sure if that is due to the worsening quality of the phone call, or… something else.

“I finish radio interview in Moscow. I see Krasnaya Ploshchad from window.”

Aly has a distinct giggle she only releases when Aliya speaks complicated Russian, and it floods her ears now, the vibration making its way down her head and her chest, all the way to her gut. _“You’re seeing what?”_

“Um, plaza in Moscow. Where Kremlin is.”

“ _Oh,”_ she murmurs with understanding. _“You’re at the Red Square… the one that has that church with the towers that look like ice cream swirls.”_

It’s Aliya’s turn to laugh then, and lean forward and hug her knees to her torso just so her body won’t feel so cold and isolated from everything. “Yes. When you come to Russia, I show you. Very beautiful to see.”

“ _I’m not too much of a sight-seeing person,”_ Aly says, and Aliya can almost picture her shrugging—a now common gesture from her that began with the girl trying to imitate Aliya.

“No, have to show you all Moscow buildings. If not, then what you plan to do when visit Russia?”

“ _Kiss you,”_ Aly blurts out immediately and with a carefree laugh. _“A lot.”_ The sound makes Aliya lower the phone and close her eyes again, and against her will she begins to imagine the girl’s face to go along with what she’s hearing. Freckles. Caramel skin. A blush. A bashful smile. _“And I’ll practice my Russian too.”_

“You learn the words I mark on dictionary?”

“ _Yep. I know how to say it now,”_ she announces proudly, sending a wave of warmth through Aliya’s shivering skin. _“But of course, I can only say it in person.”_

One day, she’s not going to call Aly, and she’s not going to answer her calls either, because talking to her like this is probably the closest she’ll ever get to being tortured.

Her taxi arrives just in time to save her, and then she bids the girl goodbye and promises to call her tomorrow, and before her brain can get sidetracked, she pulls out a pen and adds an entry to that list that she’s began to carry with her at all times.

There. No more dreaming with Aly.

———————–

“ _ **I will not think of you every time I eat chocolate.”**_

The first time she sees a Milka in an American market, Aly thinks she’s hallucinating. It’s been so long since she’s seen the little purple package that she can’t help a double-take, and then a lingering, questioning look. They sell those here? How did she never notice it?

And then she buys it reluctantly and bites off a tiny piece—and promptly throws the package out because the taste reminds her of so many things; things she already has to constantly monitor in her mind, so they don’t emerge from the corners to which they’ve been banished and cause her tear ducts to activate. She doesn’t need a stupid Milka bar making everything more difficult because goddamn it, she still hasn’t cried, and she’s not going to.

Aly writes down another entry in her list and then, once she ponders on how unlikely it’ll be for her to actually accomplish that goal, she purposely stops eating chocolate.

——————————-

“ _ **I will not be affected when the television replays the floor exercise final.”**_

Aliya accidentally settles down her bag on top of the remote control. The television in her room at Lake Krugloye flashes into life and shows, much to her horror, the medal ceremony for the floor final at the Olympics, during which she actually stood side-by-side with Aly on the podium.

Instantly, she catches her breath and all her muscles lunge and tighten into action and she’s already slapping the OFF button while her chest is constricting and her stomach is dropping to the floor beneath her.

This reaction, she ponders later when she realizes her slap was more like a punch and now the remote control doesn’t work properly, is completely unacceptable. Determinedly, she pulls out the now-worn list and adds an entry. And then she sits down at her table and decides to fix the remote control before Masha yells at her.

_**———————-** _

“ _ **I will not feel jealous when I see pictures of you with another girl.”**_

_Yours_

She breathes deeply.

_Yours_

Double turn.

_Yours_

Breathe.

_Yours_

Do it. Standing Arabian. Do it.

_Yours_

“Good job.” Alexandr’s voice replaces her inner one; it’s calmer and cooler and doesn’t make her heart feel raw. “How is the ankle?” It dawns on her then that when he asked her to do another run-through of her beam, what he wanted to see was her Arabian. Because she fell on it today a little more often than usual.

“Fine,” she replies indifferently. Every time she lands this leap on beam, she has to brace herself for a shockwave of pain coursing through her leg, and sometimes it’s completely manageable, like right now, and sometimes it makes her fall off. “Do you want me to finish it?”

“Do your dismount and then you can go ice.”

“Okay.” She almost asks him to keep talking; please, Alexandr, I can’t shut my mind off, but you can.

She positions herself, and breathes. It starts again.

_Yours_

_Yours_

She lands perfectly.

“Very good.”

Later, she sulks in the icing room and her moody countenance successfully wards off every other gymnast from approaching her. And even if she knows better, she turns on her phone again and looks at the picture.

It’s not like she can complain, really. She asked Maroney to take care of her, and maybe all this hugging and standing too close and the incessant talking is Maroney’s way of doing that. And maybe Aly is enjoying it. Maybe she’s going to like her, too. Maybe she’ll be someone else’s…

_Yours_

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Her phone vibrates and her eyes snap to the screen and she almost laughs emptily when she reads Aly’s name as the caller.

Timing. Theirs was so bad in everything, but sometimes, like now, it actually works out.

——————–

This is why Aly avoids the internet. Not because of creepy comments on her photos or negative feedback on her routines, but _this_ —Aliya and Viktoria Komova, post-interview, posing like the greatest friends (or more) in the history of the universe. And God, there are so many pictures of them. It’s kind of intimidating to look at the mass collection of snapshots that, true, are not all recent, but they’re there staring back at her and it’s hard not to think of how Komova and Nabieva and every other girl Aliya has ever hugged is in Russia with Aliya right now, while she’s in San Jose, California, with an ocean between them.

That’s the problem, right? Not knowing whether she should try to move on and find someone else so she’ll stop feeling like her life is on hold until she can reach out and feel that warm, pale skin again. They never really talked about what they were, or what they would be once they parted ways and attempted to find time in the next year to visit each other’s countries. So this is where she’s stopped, and dug her feet in so she simply can’t leave; this place where everything she is and has belongs to a girl she might not even see in a very, very long time.

“Aly!” At the sound of her name being called from beside her in the locker room, Aly quickly shuts her computer and looks up. “Rehearsal is in ten minutes.”

“Okay. Be right there.”

“ _Vika and I, like sisters. Since very young. Very close, always.”_

“ _… it just means ‘mine.'”_

She risks a glance at her forearm and then, noting her own sharp intake of breath as a reaction to the pain, she immediately regrets it. It’s been months and she still hasn’t cried; why break that streak now?

But then she’s reaching for her phone, and even while the sane part of her mind is asking her, why break that streak now, why break it now, why are you doing this? she still presses the buttons, and becomes at once aware of how horribly nervous she feels every time she’s going to talk to Aliya; it’s the awareness that through her laughs and smiles, persists that one singular ache inside of her that she can’t medicate or treat; that absence that makes everything in her world so much colder and blander than it used to be.

“ _Aly?”_

“Hey,” she breathes out. She always holds her breath, she can’t drop that habit. “I hope it’s not late there.”

“ _No. I finish training, and now doing ice bath.”_

Don’t say it, Aly. Don’t say—“I always think of you when I see ice.” She’s really not well. Her brain is mush if she’s not even considering her words before they’re already spilling out of her.

“ _I think of you also. I think of you all of today,”_ Aliya replies softly, and suddenly her voice sounds so much sadder and heavier and hesitant that Aly almost wants to hang up, or cover her ears, or—that’d be so much better—run away. _“Aly… you like someone in America?”_

I wish I did. I wish I _could_.

Her heart hurts her heart hurts her heart hurts…

“No… I think you ruined it for everybody else.” She swallows hard, and as she’s responding she’s also measuring her faint breathing, and reminding herself that no, she still hasn’t cried yet, and she won’t because she can’t. “No one is as nice, or funny, or as perfect-looking as you.” She starts to laugh a bit, just because things are so quiet around her and she wants to fill the silence with something other than her strained voice. “Oh, and no one has your accent.” Aliya finally laughs with her. “So you see how there’s no competition for you.”

“ _So you do not give chocolate to another person in America?”_

Their conversation has finally taken a definitely lighter turn, and it’s just in time because Aly was beginning to think that she would need to call an ambulance for her chest pains. “No… are you giving tattoos to someone in Russia?”

“ _Nyet.”_ Aliya’s voice is freer now, and Aly wonders whether she had a lump in her throat too, and can finally breathe past it. _“Today I think; when I see you again, kiss from me will be very bad.”_

“You couldn’t kiss badly if you tried,” Aly retorts laughingly, and distractedly she glances at that forearm again—that marker might as well still be there.

Aliya continues with that joking tone that always loosens Aly’s tense muscles and nerves. _“No, because I do not kiss anyone since Olympics. Very long time. When I see you again, maybe forget how to kiss.”_

Aly covers her phone and takes a quick second to sigh heavily and attempt to keep all her parts bound together and continue the teasing, instead of describing to this girl just how horribly she’s been falling apart without her. “Well, then we’ll both be really bad and out of practice. I haven’t kissed anyone since the Olympics, either.”

“Aly!” She turns her head and sees McKayla approaching, large strides despite the cast secured around her leg. “Time for rehearsal. Who are you calling?”

Aly nods quickly and dismissively; “I’ll be right there.” She turns her attention back to her phone, trying to be very obvious about it so her friend will know that she’s more or less intruding.

“ _Maroonee?”_

“Yeah…” McKayla is stepping away but still isn’t out of ear-shot so Aly doesn’t risk a longer reply. “I have to rehearse for the show tonight…”

“ _Okay, we talk other time.”_

She goes back to staring at the forearm; she can almost picture that word again, standing out against her skin. She can almost remember every second of Aliya’s reaction when she saw it. She can almost relive every sensation she had when Nastia translated that other word for her.

It’s this distracted train of thought that dampers her next sentence into a murmur. “Do svidaniya, Aliya.”

—————————-

“ _ **I’ll make sure my friends don’t know that I miss you.”**_

“Hey. I saw your fall. Everything good?” This role, of taking care of other people, is one Aliya settles into easily. It takes the attention away from her own problems.

“I’m fine,” Maria responds with a sigh, packing away her equipment to take a shower. She’s always been a good roommate. “You had a good day, huh? I didn’t see you fall once.”

“I was okay.” She’s sitting down on her bed, and when she pulls up her knees, that scar she’s always distantly aware of jumps into her line of sight.

“ _I think it’s pretty badass.”_

“You were better than okay. But… everyone’s noticed that you’ve been sad. Is it because of the American?”

Please, she’s about to beg the universe, stop making me think of her.

“No.”

“ _And you’re going to have to keep liking me until we see each other again…”_

“Really?”

“Yes.” She returns Maria’s sympathetic gaze with a steely glare of her own. But after so many years of throwing these looks around, her friends seem to have developed some sort of immunity to it. That’s probably why Maria is so unfazed, and continues on with her chosen topic.

“I saw that list you carry with you,” she says gently, carefully. “You don’t have to hide so much, you know. It’s been a while and you haven’t talked about it with anyone.”

She’s always been defensive, automatically. “I don’t have anything to talk about.”

“So you feel okay? Everything is good with you?”

No. Everything is so, so wrong and off and terrible and I think I’m losing my mind.

“I mean,” Maria plows on, unaffected by the heavy, depressed atmosphere, “how do you feel?”

It’s amazing, how weak she is nowadays. She actually answers Maria’s question. “I feel like…” I’m living in a world that should have ended. “Like I’m going to be sad for a while. Because I really miss her.”

——————

She’s going insane. There’s no way she’s retained any part of her sanity if she thinks about Aliya first thing in the morning, all throughout the day, before she goes to sleep, and even has dreams about her. Something is very, very wrong with her.

It only takes one second for everything to crumble inside her that evening; only one second because that’s how long it takes for Nastia to press play on the recently-delivered DVD of their Olympics footage. She has to pretend to be all right, even when she stops registering the motions of the bus and the laughter and comments from her teammates, having instead to keep her composure in check every time Aliya pops into the screen. Hours tick on by and dread—mountains and growing mountains of it—begins to overtake her, because the floor finals are next and oh my God oh my God oh my God…

When that hug happens, the one that took place after Aliya’s floor routine, after the girl made her way to her with the widest, happiest smile, and Aly had been standing by because there was no way she could be anywhere else but right there; when that hug happens, the bus is stopping at a gas station in the middle of this dark nowhere and Aly doesn’t notice that she’s hurriedly exited the vehicle until she’s walking towards a small bridge nearby, which overlooks some sort of lake or ocean or river or—where are they? Just… far, right? Far away from everything that matters.

—————-

“You told Nastia about Aly and Mustafina, didn’t you?” McKayla accuses in a hushed whisper when all the girls step out of the bus to stretch their legs and stock up on supplies or use a restroom that isn’t the one they’ve been sharing for so long. “She asked me about it today; asked me whether I knew. What the hell, Jo.”

Jordyn sighs with frustration, probably at being confronted with this. “Well, she told me this story about Aly and some Russian word she asked her to write on her arm, and it just slipped out.”

“You know that if Aly wanted people to know, she would have told everyone herself.”

“Right. 'Hey everyone, just wanted to put it out there that I was sleeping with Aliya Mustafina during the Olympics. Thanks for your time.'” Jordyn’s incredulous joke irritates McKayla so much that she almost stomps away in rage.

“You’ve seen her. Aly isn’t doing well. She really liked Mustafina.”

“How could she like her? Mustafina is Russian and has all the charisma of a knife—and Aly knew it wouldn’t go anywhere. I bet Mustafina isn’t all tore up about this.”

“That’s just the thing, you know…” McKayla swallows hard, gathers her thought, elaborates her response inside her conflicted mind. “I think she is.”

——————–

Don’t pick up.

How can she not pick up? It’s Aliya.

Don’t pick up.

This is bad, bad timing. Terrible timing. You’re going to say things you shouldn’t.

Don’t pick up.

Pick yourself up first.

Don’t pick up.

Don’t tell her, everything just keeps getting worse instead of better; I’m just not healing.

Don’t pick up.

Don’t tell her, I wish I could forget about you entirely.

Don’t pick up.

Don’t…

She picks up.

“ _Privet, Aly.”_

“Aliya…” She probably should go a few minutes pretending things are all right, before laying herself bare, but there’s a sad exhaustion wearing her down, while an even sadder agitation propels her up, and she just can’t balance those two out. “I’m not good at this.”

Instantly, Aliya’s glee evaporates into worry. _“Something is wrong?”_

“Everything. Because of you.”

————–

McKayla starts regretting broaching the subject with Jordyn the minute the girl’s eyes widen with unhidden surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“I talked to her. Mustafina.”

“You did _what_?”

“I don’t know if you know, but that night after the floor final, Mustafina spent the night at Aly’s room and mine, while I was with you guys.” This isn’t exactly her most pleasant memory from the Olympics, so McKayla pauses again, to tell the story without letting her personal feelings seep through. “And the next morning, when I went to the room, Mustafina was leaving. Her whole team left to Russia that morning. Anyway, she was leaving, so she and I bumped into each other, and we talked. For a little bit.”

—————-

“Remember I told you that you ruined it for everybody else? I didn’t say it right, because what you did was ruin _me_. I don’t even function well nowadays. Nothing in me _works_.”

——————-

“Holy crap…” Jordyn exhales, and McKayla is reminded of the magnitude of this event. It didn’t seem like much right after it happened, but when she looks back on it now, the significance of having talked to that Russian gymnast, about her own teammate, becomes apparent. “Did you guys, like, fight?”

“Why would we fight?” _Oh._ She doesn’t want to hear the answer to that, so she moves on without missing a beat. “She said that she really likes Aly. That they weren’t going to see each other for a long time, and she would miss her. And Jo, she really looked like she was so sad…”

——————

“I’m tired of hurting all the time because I miss you all the time. Everything makes me think about you and sometimes I love that but mostly I hate it, and I hate that about myself; that I let you get to me so badly.”

——————

Her breath starts to come out a little unevenly, just because that’s what always happens when she has to start warding off unwanted feelings and emotions. “Mustafina said that she knew I’m a good friend of Aly’s, and then she um…” Jordyn leans forward instinctively, which is great because McKayla’s voice won’t carry out like usual. “She asked me to take care of Aly for her.”

——————-

There’s an impossibly heavy knot inside her throat, hot and hurting, but all of her words burst through it with ease, and she even sees the visible manifestation of her harrowed rant through the puffs of her breath in front of her. “And that stupid list didn’t work because I did everything I wasn’t supposed to—I thought about you all the time, and felt jealous of you, and I wrote that I wasn’t going to cry over you, and that was the one thing I was able to do, until you called me tonight.”

“ _Aly…”_

“I thought I’d get better and this would get better but it just gets worse everyday, and this is the first time in my life that I can’t fix myself.”

Instead of listening to Aliya’s pained voice, Aly grabs her phone, musters all of her strength, and throws it into the body of water in front of her. She only watches the result of her action to make sure there are ripples on the water’s surface—that it really landed in there, and it really sunk.

There.

———————

_**“I’ll have an appropriate reaction when we see each other again.”** _

_**  
**_


End file.
